EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS, 



1857-1865. 



MEMOIR AND SPEECHES, 



BY 



SAMUEL S. COX. 



" It is advisable to exceed in lenity rather than in severity ; to banish but few rather than many ; 
and to loave them their estates, instead of making a vast number of confiscations. Under pretence 
of avenging the republic's cause, the avengers would establish tyranny. The business is not to destroy 
the rebel, but the rebellion. They ought to return as quicklj' as possible into the usual track of gov- 
ernment, in which every one is protected by the laws, and no one injured." — Montesquieu. 



NEW YORK : 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

443 & 445 BROADWAY, 
1865. 






Ektebed according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 

D. APPLETON & COMPANT, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 



TO 

MY CONSTITUENTS IN OHIO, 

BT WHOSE REQUEST THIS VOLUME IS PREPARED, 
A8 A TOKEN OF ESTEEM AND GEATITUDE. 



In penning this inscription, from a distant city, aloof from old 
associations, and devoted to new pursuits, memories of you throng, 
cheer, and sweeten my thoughts. JS'ot only do I recall the kindly 
courtesies and personal attachments at your firesides and meetings, 
but the unwavering trust you reposed, from the first effort which 
I made against sectionalism to the present time, when the conse- 
quences of that sectionalism, so sanguinary and terrible, yet re- 
main. I represented you truly, when I warned and worked from 
1856 to 1860 against the passionate zealotry of north and south ; 
when I denounced, in and out of Congress, the bad fallacy and 
worse conduct of the secessionists ; when I voted to avert the im- 
pending war by every measure of adjustment ; and when after war 
came, by my votes for money and men, I aided the Administration 
in maintaining the Federal authority over the insurgent States. 



iv DEDICATION. 

Sustained by yon, I supported every measure which was constitu- 
tional and expedient, to crush rebellion. At the same time I have 
freely challenged the conduct of the Administration in the use of 
the means committed to it by a devoted people. Believing that a 
proper use of such means would bring peace and union, and be- 
lieving in no peace as permanent unless it were wedded to the 
Union, in love and contentment, I have omitted no opportunity 
to forward these objects. This I have done in spite of threat and 
violence. For doing it your confidence has not been diminished, 
but increased. 

I know that the popular heart for some years will love to 
dwell most upon the deeds of the war. The Doers will and 
perhaps should outshine the Talkers. Our defenders in the held 
will be elevated above those in the fornm. Men are prone to ad- 
mire the hero. When he has the solid elements of courage and 
virtue, added to the glitter of martial success, admiration becomes 
worship. I*s^apoleon understands this. To aggrandize the great 
founder of his family, he makes the Csesars create events, rather 
than events create Caesars. But it is as true that the French Eevo- 
lution was indebted to Rousseau for its seminal idea, as that its 
events developed the greatness of Buonaparte. The great captains 
of our war, McClellan, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Farragut, and 
Porter, whose names will shine most upon the historic roll, were 
but tlie blossoms of that growth of ideas, whose antagonism and 
elucidation have been the work of the Press, Pulpit, and Fornm. 

In the humble part I have taken in. these discussions, I have 
never underrated the magnitude of the institutions involved and 
their underlying principles. Augustus Schlegel said of authorship 
tliat according to the spirit in which it has been pursued, it is an 
infamy or a virtue. So of politics. They constitute a great moral 



DEDICATION. V 

and intellectual science. In its pursuit passions and interests 
should be subordinate to wisdom and truth. Acrimony should 
give place to charity if not to good humor. This is for the behoof 
of society, whose tranquillity depends far more upon the dominant 
tliought tlian upon the successful sword. 

I would not, if I could, perpetuate any of the conflicts illus- 
trated in this collection. I have had my share of such conflicts. 
No ambition now actuates me save that I may be instrumental, 
through these pages, in mirroring the past eight years, with the 
clearness and fidelity of truth. Whatever my own views may 
have seemed to some, they are to be judged as you my constitu- 
ents judged them, by their expression as here given, without parti- 
san gloss or misrepresentation. 

Notwithstanding this volume has been prepared for your kind 
eye, it is published with distrust ; therefore I crave from you the 
same indulgence which you have always accorded. 

SAMUEL S. COX. 

New York City, June 30, 1865. 



0]N^TE]:^TS. 



MEMOIR. 

PAGB 

A Constitutional Opposition 5 

Classification of the Volume 9 

Kansas and the Territorial Question 13 

XXXVI. Congress — its Members and Views lY 

SPEECHES. 

Expenses of 1858 and 1864 Compapj;d 31 

Tariff in 1864 , 35 

Future Questions of Finance 61 

Sedition in the North 06 

Northern Nullifiers , 6*7 

Revolutionary Abolitionism — Reply to Mr. Corwin "72 

Expulsion of Mr. Long — Reply to Speaker Colfax 87 

Arguelles Case — Right of Asylum 104 

Territorial Expansion — Continental Policy 109 

Mexican Politics — National Growth 128 

Recognition of Hayti and LiBERtA 151 

Trent Ajefaiu 161 

Democracy of the Sea — Maritime Rights 169 

Secession — Compromise — Nationality 188 

Eulogy of Douglas 211 

Reply to Mr. Gurley on General McClellan 218 

Emancipation and its Results 236 

Meaning of the Elections of 1862 259 



Viil CONTENTS. 

PAOB 

Puritanism in Politics 281 

The Conscription Bill 303 

JTegro Soldiers 317 

Personal Liberty — Vallandigham's Case 327 

Magna Charta — its Sanctity 335 

Confiscation 336 

Miscegenation 352 

Historic Lessons — Reconstruction 370 

Constitutional Amendment Abolishing Slavery 396 

Admission of Cabinet into Congress 417 



EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 



I. 

A CONSTITUTIONAL OPPOSITION. 

Outside of the " home circle " of constituents to whom this volume is 
inscribed, it may be read by those in search of the motives and principles 
which actuated a constitutional opposition in time of civil war. It was 
either the good or bad fortune of the writer to antagonize with the adminis- 
tration of his own party on the territorial questions from 1856 to 1860. 
But this may be overlooked by unfriendly critics. The time of war being 
the time of danger, the unreflecting and unphilosophical may wonder 
how such an opposition at such a period could consist with patriotism. 
Do they forget how England was saved from disgrace in the Crimean 
war by the onslaughts of the opposition led by the London Times ? May 
not the Government be magnified by exposing the weakness of its admin- 
istration ? Is there not constant need of such criticism as will strengthen 
the Government while it condemns the policy of its imbecile or corrupt 
agents ? Lest the very function should cease by the incapacity of the 
functionary, should we be less heedful how we undignify the office by un- 
due contempt of the officer, than how we u.nduly dignify the officer at the 
expense of the office ? 

Hence, in all free countries an opposition is regarded as an element 
of the Constitution — an estate of tlie realm. It cannot be dispensed 
with without danger to Liberty. However great may be the obligation 
of the country to the soldier for his valiant right arm, it owes something 
to those who, regardless of the frowns of power or the allurements of 
patronage, maintained a steadfast front against the corruptions and tyran- 
nies incident to war. 

If I may quote from a letter addressed to me on the 22d of January, 



6 EIGHT YEAK8 m CONGKESS. 

1865, by the Hon. James Guthrie of Kentucky, in reference to the con- 
stitutional amendment abolishing slavery, I would recognize the truth, 
that " the rebellion has left deep scars on the Constitution of the United 
States, and those of the States ; and if some are made on the road to re- 
union and the restoration of peace, with renewed confidence in freedom 
and justice, we must leave its apology to the evils and necessities of the 
times." Yet in recognizing this truth now, is it a reproach to a fearless 
representative that he was not an indifferent spectator while such scars 
were being made? His duty before the war, and d fortiori during its con- 
tinuance, was to proclaim the perils to constitutional freedom and federal 
union involved in a violent conflict. The statue of Liberty was veiled 
again and again, during its progress. Nor has the cessation of hostilities 
fully restored the freedom of the citizen. It is the writer's pride, that 
he never failed to protest against the eclipse of Liberty by Power. Hence, 
what may have seemed to a superficial observer an vinpatriotic opposi- 
tion, was only and truly an opposition to the arbitrary proceedings with 
which the war was accompanied. Such an opposition was dictated by 
regard for the ycyj object which the war sought to establish. Time will 
vindicate both the writer and others, who, while they maintained the 
war for the Union, did not permit their voices for personal and public 
liberty to be drowned in the clangor of arms. Those v/ho contest en- 
croachments incident to war, are never regarded in history as enemies, 
but as the truest devotees of well-regulated Liberty. 

The key-note to these speeches, and all efforts made by their author in 
and out of Congress, was struck in the heat of a debate with a member 
from Indiana, Mr. Julian, on the 9th of April, 1864 : — " Under no cir- 
cumstances conceivable by the human mind, would I ever violate the Con- 
stitution for any purpose. To compass its destruction as a probable or 
possible necessity, is the very gospel of anarchy — the philosophy of disso- 
lution." This was in reply to a Northern statesman, urging extra-con- 
stitutional means to suppress the rebellion. Almost the same language 
■vvas used by the writer, to denounce the heresy of secession in the winter 
of 1860-'61. 

In the perusal cf these pages, no one will find any aid, by speech or 
vote, given to those who raised the standard of revolt. In his speech on 
" Conciliation and Nationality," the writer, while pleading for the spirit 
and measures of compromise, invoked at the same time that vigorous 
spirit of nationality, which could only exist with an unmutilated Union. 
He warned South Carolina, that in striving to be Augustus, her fate 
would be less than Augustulus. When the resolution was iniroduced 
thanking Gen. Anderson for his defence of Fort Sumter, the writer 



A CONSTITUTIONAL OPPOSITION. T 

gave it his heartiest vote. "When eulogizing Judge Douglas, after his 
death, at the extra session of 1861, the writer regarded it as the consum- 
mate glory of Douglas's life to have given his most emphatic utterance 
for the maintenance of the Government, even though its administration 
was committed to his old political antagonist, and although he knew that 
such expression imperilled the lives of a hundred thousand of his friends. 

Throughout the subsequent years of the war, the writer always voted 
for the support of the army. Without refining as to the pov/er to coerce 
a State, or to enforce the laws of the United States against individuals, 
he found the wa,r flagi-ant. He acted for its vigorous maintenance. 
Whether the war was simply to preserve the rights of the General Govern- 
ment, by repelhng a direct and positive aggression upon its property or 
its officers ; or whether it was, in fact, a war of general hostility, carried on 
by the central government against a State, was considered by some be- 
fore the war as a momentous question. But after the Avar came, its red 
right hand made a new code. The enforcement of national supremacy 
overwhelmed all questions of State coercion. 

Wby was it not compatible to favor both war and peace, without a 
solecism in thought or language ? When this war appeared as a speck on 
the horizon, I pleaded and voted for conciliation. I voted for every com- 
promise, including that of Crittenden. I preferred the bonds of Love to 
the armor of Force, I found in the Sermon on the Mount a wisdom 
beyond that of Presidents or priests. I never went so far as Charles 
Sumner in his speech on the " True Grandeur of Nations," when he pro- 
nounced " all international war to be civil war, and the partakers in it to 
be traitors to God and enemies to man ; " when he quoted Cicero to show 
that he " preferred the unjustest peace to the justest war ; " and Franklin, 
to show that there " never was a good war or a bad peace ; " or when Mr. 
Sumner declared "that in our age there can be no peace that is not hon- 
orable." — (Sumner^s Works, vol. i., p. 11.) But I did and do hold that 
in our land it was wisest, kindest, and best to agree to any compro- 
mise which Crittenden framed, Douglas advocated, and to which Davis 
and Toombs acceded, which would have averted these horrible calami- 
ties. In thus believing, I sought to carry out the Democratic principle 
which Madison laid down before the late war of 1812 — " that war was 
only and rarely tolei'able as a necessary evil, to be kept off as long, and 
Avhenever it takes place, to be closed as soon as possible." When this 
civil war began, I voted for the Crittenden Resolution of July 22, 18G1, that 
it was not to be waged in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of 
conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering 
with the rights or established institutions of the States, but to defend 



8 EIGHT YEAES EST CONGEESS. 

and maintaia the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the 
Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States un- 
impau-ed. I voted the money and men in the spirit of the President's Inau- 
gural of March 4, 1861, when he declared that he had no purpose, direct- 
ly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States 
where it exists ; " I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination 
to do so." 

It was in this spirit that on the 26th of July, 1861, I offered a reso- 
lution in Congress to make undiminished and increased exertions by our 
navy and army to maintain the Government, and that a commission be 
appointed, consisting of Millard Fillmore and others, to meet commis- 
sioners, not from the rebel Government, but from the seceded States, to 
aid in restoring by peaceful and honorable measures the old Union and 
the former condition of things. I defended my resolution when it was 
pressed against me by the opposition. I have not swerved a hair from 
it. I said in 1863: "I am as ready now to cancel confiscation and 
emancipation policies, and welcome Louisiana and North Carolina back 
to their old position, as I am to sustain our army in the field while a rebel 
army contests our authority on a foot of our soil." 

The writer opposed many of the acts of the administration. He 
believed then, as now, that they tended to procrastinate peace. In this 
view he sympathized with such statesmen as Gov. Crittenden. That the 
war would not end without the destruction of slavery, he believed as 
firmly as that it was his duty to save as much as possible of the incontes- 
table powers of the States over domestic matters. Mr. Stephens had 
warned the Georgia Convention, on the 14th of November, 1860, that "a 
vindictive decree of universal emancipation " would follow secession. So 
it did ; but it was powerless compared with the military arm which had 
unshackled the slave before the edict came. 

Peace has come. Slavery is gone. The constitutional amendment is 
not adopted ; but its adoption is only a form, and a question of time. 
The part taken by the writer concerning that amendment is shown in 
this volume. 

The country is greatly changed — politically, socially, materially, na- 
tionally. Novus seculorum nascitur ordo. What that new order may be, 
depends upon the adherence of President Johnson to his former princi- 
ples. We have a census of more than thirty millions, scattered over a 
great area. We are what Mr. Disraeli called a Territorial Democracy. 
When the census becomes 60,000,000, or 100,000,000, the questions of 
municipal independence. State rights, and local self-government may come 
with more force than ever before. In the judgment of the writer, it is 



CLASSIFICATION' OF THE VOLUME. 9 

only by adhering to the doctrines of decentralization, that the great di- 
versity of interests in a union of such extent can be harmonized, and 
the questions of individual rights properly settled. These doctrines of 
local independence and self-government have been the inspiration of the 
words and acts here recorded. They have found expression all through 
these speeches. Without them, our Union will be forever endangered. 
With them, it will fulfil the hopes and prayers of all patriots. They 
furnish the key to unlock the magic chambers of our future. They are 
the safe and golden mean between the extremes of faction. As Tenny- 
son has sung : 

The wisdom of a thousand years 

Is in them. May perpetual youth 

Keep dry their light from tears, 

Make bright our days and light our dreams, 

Turning to scorn, with lips divine, 

The falsehood of extremes. 



II. 

CLASSIFICATION OF THE VOLUME. 

The speeches are arranged in classes : 

First. — Those connected with finance and tariff. The first speech is 
in defence of the economy of the Government, when only sixty-five millions 
per year was the appropriation. The last one is at a time when eight 
hundred millions per session were voted ! The speech on the tariff is the 
most elaborate of the collection. It is an exposition, by irrefragable data 
and arguments, of the robbery, under the present system, by the producer 
of the great bulk of the consumers. It is an earnest appeal to return to 
the principles of economic science and unrestricted interchange to which 
the civilization of the age has given body and spirit. The stupendous 
iniquity by which one set of States and one class of men are allowed gra- 
tuities from the unprotected States and classes, must soon be understood. 
Men of all parties Avill unite to correct this gigantic injustice. As Cobden 
and Peel joined hands, while Elliott sang and ViUiers spoke, to give Eng- 
land the cheap loaf; as at last that boon was wrested by an intelligent 
people from a landed monopoly ; so before 1868, agriculture and commerce, 
labor of all kinds, consumers of every degree, will join in a new Bund^ 
to rescue famishing toil from fiscal tyranny. To this speech I challenge 
the scrutiny of every reflecting citizen. 



10 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

Second. — Speeches wliicli display the sedition and sectionalism of the 
North. The republication of such speeches may be reprehended now ; 
but truth compels their publication. No one can deny but that the South 
had grievances. Their error and crime consisted in mistaking — oh ! how 
wofuUy — their remedy. 

From the beginning of the Government there have been sectional as- 
perities growing out of sectional interests. These were happily reconciled, 
in their successive eras, by statesmanship. For more than a generation 
past these animosities have been aggravated by zealots in both sections. 
Political ambition, springing out of the rank soil of sectional hate, engen- 
dered by the heats of theologic strife, at last cvilminated in the open revolt 
of 1861. Not alSne slavery, but questions involving provincial jealousy, 
representation and taxation, excise, assumption of State debts, assertion 
of State rights, commercial restrictions, the pm'chase or acquisition of ter- 
ritory, and the war of 1812, have ft-om the beginning given to the slavery 
question additional fuel, and embroiled the States into an antagonism in 
which the sword leaped from the sheath. State comity and Christian feeling, 
at different eras of the controversy, alleviated its harshness and composed 
its rancor. But the conflict was declared irrepressible ; and irrepressibly 
it burst forth. 

It would be a falsehood, if not a crime, to say that the blame for these 
animosities rested exclusively on one section. Not alone on the South, 
not alone on the North, but upon both sections, will history afhx the 
stigma. Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra, 

Vattel says that no considerable insurrection or rebellion ever existed 
"Nvithout some grievances as the cause. These grievances the South had. 
They committed the great crime of striking at the Federal centre, when 
their complaint was against States. Besides, their remedy was ample in 
the Union. Revolution can never be justified unless two things concur : 
first, the grievances must be great, and irremediable except by the sword ; 
and secondly, there must be a reasonable probability of success. The 
South had neither justification. For them to draw the sword, was to fall 
upon it. 

From this clags of speeches, it will be seen that the leaders of Southern 
revolt copied many of their pernicious heresies and worse practices from 
the seditionists of the North. 

TJiird. — Connected with the above classification, incidentally discussed, 
was the question of fugitives from foreign lands and the right of asylum. 
The occasion was the action of the administration in the Arguelles case. 
I offered a resolution reprobating the violation of the right of asylum. 
It was shelved without allowing debate. There was only one opportunity 



CLASSIFICATION" OF THE VOLUME. 11 

to debate it. That was in connection with the return of fugitives from 
justice and labor, in which the analogies were pointed out. This question 
was met by the usual fling : " Oh ! you are defending the slave trade. 
You arc the advocate of the enemy of our race." But time has shown 
that Arguelles was not what he has been charged with being ; that Gen- 
eral Dulce has been dismissed for his treatment of Arguelles ; and that 
the precedent our nation made is a blot upon the diplomatic escutclieon of 
our country. 

Fourth. — Speeches on Foreign Affairs. These axe mostly in vindi- 
cation of oui' traditional policy respecting this continent. They were 
made in 1859 and 1860. They contain words since made prophetic by 
the action of France, absolutely prophetic. They laid down a policy for 
the orderly and erect independence of Mexico ; such a policy as would 
give us the commercial and other results of annexation, witliout its 
troubles and dangers. If the warnings I gave in 1860 had been heeded, 
Maximilian would now be at his palace in Miramar, overlooking the 
Adriatic, and Napoleon content with quoting the Koran to prove his 
Cassarism divine for Arab as well as Frank. These speeches had the honor 
of Spanish and French translations, and considerable circulation in 
Spanish America as well as Europe. But, in anticipation of our own 
troubles, they attracted but little attention from our own citizens. Gen. 
Cass did me the favor to say that he would rest his policy, as Secretary 
of State, on the principles enunciated in them. That these principles are 
destined to play a large part in our future, is akeady " manifest." I will 
thank my constituents to re-read them in the light of the present time. 

In connection with foreign affairs, I offered, on the 3d of March, 1862, 
a series of resolutions in relation to maritime law. They grew out of 
the Trent affair. In December, 1861, I had discussed the questions in- 
volved in the seizure of the soi-disant ambassadors of the South. I did 
not believe that a single principle had been violated in that seizure. I 
am a firm advocate of the Democracy of the Sea ; I could not have 
spoken as I did, had I believed that it had been outraged in that case. I 
desired, however, that the most important international question of our 
age — the maritime rights of nations — should receive fresh impulse. I 
wished that impulse to be in the path of liberality. With a view to un- 
trammelling commerce from the English system, I embodied, in the reso- 
lutions which I offered, the best sentiment of the progressive publicists of 
all time. With such ability as I could command, I urged the ameliora- 
tion of the liabilities of neutrals and the assertion of the traditionary policy 
of America. 

Fifth. — A eulogy upon Stephen A. Douglas. This species of oratory 



12 EIGHT TEARS IN CONGKESS. 

has not been regarded hitherto as very successfully illustrated in our 
parliamentary annals. My relations with Judge Douglas ; his peculiar 
doctrines ; and his death, so inopportune, combined to give an interest to the 
theme which oratory failed to elicit. The American people have since 
done justice to Douglas. This eulogy will not be looked upon now as 
the emanation of a partial friend, but as a truthful analysis of a giant 
mind, energized into action by the throbbings of a great heart. 

Sixth. — Speeches growing out of Secession and the "War. These em- 
brace earnest appeals to the North to tender, and the South to receive, a 
peaceful redress of grievances. They discard secession as an unconstitu- 
tional and revolutionary proceeding, unjustifiable and criminal, and ele- 
vate the principle of nationality to that "eminence where the Constitu- 
tion can ever shield it. They embrace a vindication of Gen. McClellau 
from the attack of the Congressional war critics ; the proper policy of 
conducting the war ; the errors of the fanatical and negro policies, with 
reference to emancipation and its results upon North and South, and upon 
whites and blacks ; the Conscription bill ; the Confiscation measures ; 
Puritanism in Politics ; Miscegenation ; and finally, the questions involved 
in the reconstruction of the Union and in the violation of personal liberty. 
In illustration of the speaker's views, I have introduced one short speech 
not made in Congress, upon the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham. It was 
made in May, 1863, a few days after the arrest. The sentiments of 
that speech, revivified by the classic eloquence of Hon. Heniy Winter 
Davis, have been endorsed by the House of Representatives at the end of 
the last session. 

Seventh. — The amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery, in 
which the speaker maintained the power to amend, but did not believe its 
exercise to be judicious at the time. 

Eighth.— T\\Q final speech on the proposition to admit the Cabinet into 
Congress, in which the danger of aggrandizing power in the Federal Ex- 
ecutive is considered. 

It will be observed from this arrangement and classification, that the 
round of political discussion has been run by the speaker. In not one of 
the sentences of these speeches is there a syllable that breathes aught but 
love of country, respect for its Constitution, reverence for its foimders, 
and prayerful aspirations for its permanent peace and prosperity. 



III. 

KANSAS AND THE TERRITORIAL QUESTION. 

The writer was thrown iuto Congress by the refluent wave that fol- 
lowed the excitement growing out of the Kansas question. The Repub- 
lican party had made the issue with Judge Douglas, on his doctrine of 
sovereignty. A majority of the 35th Congress had been returned on the 
principle of laissez /aire to the people of the Territories. The travail 
which gave birth to Kansas as a State, was the same agony prolonged 
which eventuated in civil strife. Had the Democratic party, then in 
power, united wisely to thrust aside the fraudulent constitution of Kansas 
made at Lecompton, there would have been no distraction in its ranks in 
1860. The Charleston Convention would have agreed. Most probably 
no Republican success would have made memorable that year. Hence, 
in inquiring into the real, if not the proximate causes of the war and the 
alienation of the sections, we cannot ignore the questions as to Kansas. 
To be sure, Kansas Avas the occasion, rather than the cause of conflict. 
The slavery agitation was the paramount cause. There is something 
ineffably repugnant to the human heart in the relation of master and 
slave. The idea of one human being owning another human being 
would thrust itself forward in all these struggles, irrepressibly foremost. 
Whether in resistance to the constitutional authorities — as in the case of 
fugitives from justice and labor — or in the admission of new States, or in 
the organization of territories, the anti-slavery zealot, whether sincere or 
not, handled a weapon so tempered with seeming justice, so flashing, as 
it Avere, in defence of a higher than human law, and wreathed as with 
the " beauty of the lilies " by the lyric poetry of the time, that the 
sanctions of authority v,^ere as mere houses of cards before his blows. 
No wonder that with such an impulse the devotees of anti-slavery, in the 
langviage of one of their eloquent champions, " would rend the Union to 
destroy slavery, though hedged round by the triple bars of the national 
compact, and though thirty-three crowned sovereigns, with arms in their 
hands, stood around it." The pro-slavery men of 1857 forgot the grow- 
ing power of this sentiment, and the increasing power of the North to 
enforce it. They desperately struggled to force Kansas into the Union as 
a Slave State, by a stupendous fraud. In the reaction against its perpe- 
tration, a fresh agitation was aroused. This new agitation outlasted the 
interest in the case of Kansas. The whole country became a Kan- 
2 



14 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGKESS. 

sa-s. It absorbed all the energies of debate. The first speech made by 
me in Congress, and, as it was noted, the first made in the new hall of the 
House, on the 16th of December, 1857, was also the first speech against 
Lecompton by any one in the lower house of Congress. 1 remember 
taking it to Judge Douglas at his house on the Sunday preceding the 
discussion, to read him parts of it in manuscript. The Globe of that 
time v/ill show the speech, and the attempt by Southern statesmen, 
Messrs. Bococke, Quitman, Jones, and others, to cut me ofi" from the de- 
bate. As a consequence of this speech, my friend the postmaster at 
Columbus lost his office, and I lost caste with the administration. I was 
content to wander for four years throughout the administration of Presi- 
dent Buchanan — a Democrat who had helped his election, without influ- 
ence to help a single friend. 

As the interest in that discussion has subsided, I do not propose to re- 
produce these speeches. The points will appear from this extract : 

I propose now to nail against the door, at the threshold of this Con- 
gress, my theses. When the proper time comes, I will defend them, 
whether from the assaults of political friend or foe. I would fain be 
sUent, sir, here and now. But silence, which is said to be as " harmless 
as a rose's breath," may be as perilous as the pestilence. This peril 
comes from the attempt to forego the capital principle of Democratic 
policy, which I think has been done by the constitutional convention of 
Kansas. I maintain : — 1. That the highest refinement and greatest utility 
of Democratic policy — the genius of our institutions — is the right of self- 
government. 2. That this self-government means the wiU of the major- 
ity, legally expressed, 3. That this self-government and majority rule 
were sacredly guaranteed in the organic act of Kansas. 4. That it was 
guaranteed upon the question of slavery in terms ; and generally with 
respect to all the domestic institutions of the people. 5. That domestic 
institutions mean aU which are local, not national — State, not Federal. 
It means that and that only — that always. 6. That the people were to 
be left perfectly free to establish or abolish slavery, as well as to form 
and regulate their other institutions. 7. That the doctrine was recog- 
nized in every part of the Confederacy by the Democracy ; fixed in their 
national platform ; asserted by their speakers and presses ; reiterated by 
their candidates ; incorporated in messages and instructions ; and formed 
the feature which distinguished the Democracy from its opponents, who 
maintained the doctrine of congressional intervention. 8. The Lecomp- 
ton constitution, while it is asserted that it is submitted to the people in 
the essential point, thus recognizing an obligation to submit it in some 
mode, cannot, in any event, be rejected by the people of Kansas. The 
vote must be for its approval, whether the voter votes one way or an- 
other. The paopla may be unwilling to take either of the propositions, and 
yet must vote one or the other of them. They have to vote " constitu- 
tion with slavery," or " constitution with no slavery ; "' but the constitu- 
tion they must take. 



KANSAS AND THE TEKEITOEIAX QUESTION. 15 

These were the points elaborated in that discussion. Differing Avith 
Mr. Buchanan, I was constrained afterwards to difier with Judge Doug- 
las on the Compromise bill reported by a Committee of Conference. I 
voted for the latter on the ground that it returned for a fair election the 
fraudulent constitution to the people, and that there were people enough 
for a State in Kansas. I was fully justified by the subsequent action of 
the people under that bill. Subsequently I voted to receive the free 
State of Kansas ; and after justifying my former vote, scarcely exagger- 
ated the campaign I had undergone, when I said that — 

For voting for this Conference bill, even after I was justified by the 
popular vote of Kansas in the summer of 1858, I was compelled to meet 
from Republicans at home a campaign unexampled for its unprovoked 
fierceness, its base and baseless charges of personal coi-ruption, its con- 
ceit, its ignorance, its impudence, its poltroonery, its billingsgate, its bru- 
tality, its moneyed corruption, its fanatical folly, its unflagging slang, its 
drunken saturnalia, and its unblushing libels and pious hypocrisy ! At 
the capital of Ohio, in its most noble and intelligent precincts, the peo- 
ple, ashamed of and indignant at the audacious falsehood and brazen 
clamor from the presses of the State, and from the little penny-a-liners 
and pettifoggers, who echoed the libels of members fresh from this floor 
— in spite of all this the people doubled my majority of 1856. I had the 
satisfaction — prouder than a temporary victory — of seeing the policy I 
had voted for with earnest conviction of duty, and with the sustaining 
advice of such a statesman as Robert J. Walker, vindicated by time, and 
sustained by its practical operation. As the crowning act of this triumph, 
I shall vote for the admission of Kansas under this constitution. In 
doing this, I court all criticism, defy all menace, and truly represent 
almost every man, woman, and child in my district. 

Inasmuch as my vote for the Conference bill was greatly impvigned 
and as it seemed to be a departure from the original position of Judge 
Douglas, I was solicitous to have the Judge explain our relations to this 
question. This he did during the campaign of 1860. On the 20th of 
September he spoke to an immense meeting at Columbus, Ohio, in 
which he thus explained the differences between himself and other Demo- 
crats : 

"I made the first speech in the Senate against the Lecompton Con- 
stitution, and without consiilting Mr. Cox or any one else, and Mr. Cox 
made the first speech against it in the House, without consultation or dic- 
tation from me. "We fought it through on our own responsibility until 
Lecompton was dead ; and when Lecompton was defeated, its friends got 
up the English bill to cover its retreat. Hon. Robert J. Walker, then 
Governor of Kansas, advised Mr. Cox and myself to go for it, giving as- 
surance that when presented to the people of Kansas, they would kill it, 
ten to one. Under these circumstances, some of our men felt it theii* duty 



16 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGKESS. 

to go for the bill. I did not think it a fair submission to the will of the 
people, and determined to fight it too. Mr. Cox said he had consulted 
the members of the Ohio delegation, that they all agreed to vote for it, and 
that under the circumstances he should vote with them. I told him I 
had no quarrel with those of my friends who differed with me honestly on 
that point, and afterwards I wrote letters in favor of the election of some 
of tliose Avho had voted for the English bill. The Judge concluded by 
urging his friends in the District to naU the slander by reelecting Mr. Cox." 

. Had'' Judge Douglas yielded his resolution on this subject, and voted 
for the Conference biU, the teriitorial question Avould not have been mooted 
at Charleston, with so marked a personal application. His nomination 
would have been made without division. For a time, at least, secession 
would have been prevented, and war averted. The political battles of 
1860 were fought on the question of slavery in the territories. The 
election of Mr. Lincoln, which took place in November, 1860, not only 
settled the question against the South, but against the friends and doctrine 
of Judge Douglas. Congress met in December following ; then arose for 
desperate debate all the varied questions involving human servitude. It 
was to the composition of these questions that the good men of that time 
addressed themselves. That Congress was one of marked ability. The 
South especially was ably represented. The hidden facts, the inner life, 
the scenes and incidents which never appear on public record, and seldom 
appear even in the newspaper, when they shall transpire will give to that 
Congress the graphic interest of a battle picture. Out of its discussions, 
devices, and seditions, arose the bloody spectre of war ! It is my hope in 
the following pages to illustrate some of these incidents and scenes. I do 
not design to reproduce the public record ; that is done. Kor do I expect to 
change men's minds as to the merit or demerit of its men and measures. 
But there is much of interest as yet unwritten clinging to the actors in that 
drama — a drama whose last act has had its tragical denouement in the 
assassination of a kind Chief Magistrate, whose pall, like that of the last 
day, still hangs over our newly-resurrected nation. 



f 



XXXVI. CONGRESS— SESSION 1860-'61. 



ITS MEMBERS— THEIR CHARACTERISTICS, OPINIONS, AND VOTES— THE CRIT- 
TENDEN AND OTHER COMPROMISES. 

It was my intention, in this volume, to have prefixed to the speeches 
such recollections connected with the rise and progress of our civil war 
as would illustrate its motive and life. Especially did I intend to sketch 
those inner political facts and scenes which my position enabled me to 
observe. But the volume would be too much enlarged by their elabora- 
tion. It would require a volume by itself to connect with the recorded 
facts such a memorabilia. Their recital would give personal interest 
and piquancy to these historic events ; but that labor must be reserved. 
It would scarcely be kind, now that the leaders of the rebellion are under 
the ban, and many of them incarcerated, to add any thing to the reproba- 
tion which they have received, or to the fetters which weigh them down. 
Is it Ossian, or some other writer (the sentiment hardly belongs to our 
own times), who says that while we should be a tide of many streams 
against the enemies of our country, we should be as a zephyr upon the 
grass toward a fallen foe ? I would emulate that Christian philosophy, 
not only in writing but in acting. While recalling much that occurred 
during the winter of 1860-'61, it would be generous now only to record the 
inclinations and efforts of those under condemnation who then endeavored 
to stay the madness of secession. 

One thing is remarkable as connected with that Congress. For 
weeks, nay months, the Southern leaders in the Senate and House openly 
proclaimed their doctrine of secession, argued the abstract and practical 
questions connected with such movements, with great formality and 
solemnity, presented their ordinances of secession, and under their sanc- 
tions withdi-ew. This was done in the presence of excited and awe-struck 
audiences. It was done with all the graces of impassioned and polished 
eloquence. 

2 



18 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

Terribly beautifal the serpent lay, 
Wreathed Uke a coronet of gold and jewels. 

It was done, without that protest from any one of the Republican mem- 
bers which their present temper would seem to have required. One by 
one the States thus became unrepresented ; and not a word, except some- 
times debate on the abstract right to secede, or tacit acknowledgment 
that it was best for the time. No attempt was made to arrest any one, 
if we may except an affidavit by some person of no consequence, and 
whose name cannot now be recalled, on the basis of which he vainly 
urged an arrest of Davis and others for treason. Even so prominent a 
Republican as Lieut-Governor Stanton, of Ohio, to say nothing of his 
namesake the Secretary of War, Mr. Greeley, and Mr. Chase, abetted 
this movement by proposing no constraint upon the departing sisters. 

These facts, as the forerunners of the mighty conflict of arms, would 
be inexplicable did we not remember that from December, 1860, until 
March, 1861, there was a hope, as Douglas and Crittenden telegraphed 
to Georgia, that " the rights of the South and of every State and section 
would be protected in the Union." 

The first efforts at compromise were by no means confined to the 
Democratic Senators and members. Gov. Corwin, Mr. Adams, Mr. 
Edwajid Joy Morris, and others in the House ; Senators Cameron, 
Baker, Dixon, Foster, Collamer, and others in the Senate, were, at 
the 'beginning of the session, and for some time afterwards, regarded as 
not indifferent to a compromise which would at least retain the border 
States, if it did not stop the movement of the Gulf States. 

The thirty-sixth Congress was unusually gifted. Especially were the 
Southern States represented by their most experienced and able men. 
They hoped that the step they were about to take would be bloodless ; 
that their array in strength, and with the mien of resistance, would pre- 
vent coercion by arms. Even so late as the secession of Texas, after 
Judge Reagan, one of. its representatives, had left his seat, he took pains 
to inform me, that he thought the South would be out only for a season, 
and that when the excitement subsided, and especially if any guarantees 
were given of the protection of their rights, they Avould return. In this, 
how signally abihty and experience failed to discern the future ! Man- 
kind generally reckon the greatness of men by success. If this be the 
touchstone, the vaunted statesmanship of the South vanishes. But what 
a company of conspicuous names answered to the roll-call on the 6th of 
December, 1860 ! 

At the head stands John C. Breckenridge, offering his name, so 
proudly connected with the history of Kentucky, to the task of dismember- 



XXXVI. C0NGEE3S — SESSION 1860-'61. 19 

ing the Democratic party, which had once so honored him. He was among 
the last to leave his home to take the sword for the South. Now he is 
a fugitive upon English soil, pleading Avith his stricken confederates to do 
the best by submission to Federal rule. Foremost in influence, if not in 
rank, is Jefferson Davis ; how then unlike that Davis who, in Maine, but 
a few years before, had spoken nobly for the Union ; and how unlike that 
Davis, the captive of the Michigan cavalry, and the prisoner at Fortress 
Monroe ! His State was not among the foremost to secede. She waited 
until the 9th of January, 1861, before passing her ordinance, and her 
Senators lingered until the 21st before they withdrew. It is generally 
credited among those who were familiar with Mr. Davis's inclinations, 
that even after the ordinance passed he was anxious to remain. There is 
indubitable evidence that while in the Committee of Thirteen he was will- 
ing to accept the compromise of Mr. Crittenden, and recede from seces- 
sion. That compromise failed ; because, as Senator Hale said, on the 
18th of December, 1860, the day it was introduced, it was determined the 
controversy should not be settled in Congress. Wlien it failed, the hero 
of Buena Vista became the Confederate leader. Much as he is underrated 
now by Southern men who opposed him diu'ing the war, he was fitted to 
be the leader of just such a revolt. Every revolution has a fabulous or 
actual hero conformable to the local situation, manners, and character of 
the people who rise. To a rustic people like the Swiss, William Tell, 
with his cross-bow and the apple ; to an aspiring race like the Americans, 
Washington, with his sword and the law, are, as Lamartine once said, 
the symbols standing erect at the cradles of these two distinct Liberties ! 
Jefferson Davis, haughty, self-willed, and persistent, full of martial ardor 
and defiant eloquence, is the symbol, both in his character and in his 
present situation, of the proud and impulsive, but suppressed ardors and 
hopes of the Southern mind. His colleague in the Senate, Gov. Brown, 
was, according to my recollection, still more reluctant to sever the con- 
nection. He was, even before the Charleston Convention, if not openly, 
covertly a co-worker with Douglas and others in striving to preserve 
the unity of the Democratic party and the country. Gov. Brown has 
been a member of the Confederate Congress, and has been outspoken 
in his criticism on the conduct of the Confederate authorities. I doubt if 
he had much heart or faith in the secession movement. He was over- 
shadowed as a Senator by Mr. Davis ; but was far more approachable, 
and perhaps more kind, in his relations towards other members. The 
most truculent Senator from the South was Wigfall, of Texas, a man 
of scarred face and fierce aspect, but with rare gifts of oratory ; bitter at 
times, if not classical, in his denunciations. But much of his strong talk 



20 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGKESS. 

and eccentric conduct was owing to that indulgence which the " Hole in 
the Wall " furnished for Congressional wrangle. Col. "Wigfall was a 
master drinker. Had he lived among the ancient Persians,. he would 
have been in high esteem. Darius Hystaspes, among his other virtues, 
had it recorded on his tombstone, as Wigfall might truthfully upon his : 
" Here lies a man, than whom no one could hold a greater quantity of 
liquor !" 

Next to him in truculency, though not in sociality, was Senator Iver- 
SON, of Georgia. He was outspoken and bold^or the sudden disruption 
of the Union. The colleague of the latter, Mr. Toombs, was far more 
amenable to reason than his rough manner and boisterous logic indicated. 
He was a man of commanding person, reminding one, at times, of Mira- 
BEAU. Bating his broad Africanese dialect, he was often intensely elo- 
quent in the epigrammatic force of his expression. The Virginia Senators 
rank among the foremost in this movement. Much was expected from 
the moderation of Mr. Hunter, but he did little to stay the Revolution. 
Little was expected of Mr. Mason, and he did less. The former was a 
calm, phlegmatic reasoner ; the latter had a defiant, supercilious, and 
autocratic demeanor, that conciliated no one. Both were imbued with 
the heresies of the ultra Calhoun School. Louisiana was represented by 
the malicious and unscrupulous Slidell, who combined the fox with the 
tiger. His savage and sneering threat to destroy the commerce of the 
North by privateers, I heard. As he delivered it, his manner reminded 
me of Mephistopheles in one of his humors over some choice anticipated 
deviltry. But who shall picture the sleek, plausible, and silver-tongued 
JuDAH P. Benjamin? His farewell speech was as full of historic gar- 
bling and untruth as of musical and regretful cadences. As he bade adieu 
to the old Union, he drew from the spectators many plaudits for his rhet- 
oric, Avhich he could not evoke for his logic. Next to him, in the suavity 
of his manner, if not in the cogency of his speech, was Judge Clay, of 
Alabama. Pie is no^v in prison, having voluntarily surrendered. He had 
a bearing that was both dignified and graceful ; and although never very 
hale in health, was too ready to assume his role in the daring drama. 
The other Senator from Alabama, Gov. Fitzpatrick, an honest miller 
and planter at home, was a model of senatorial frankness. I have not 
seen his name mentioned since the war. He was nominated in 1860 on 
tlie ticket with Douglas at Baltimore, and but for the incessant importu- 
nity, if not threats, of Southern men who thronged his room, to shake (as 
they did) his determination, he would have stood by the Northern Democ- 
racy in its struggle against the deserters from its organization. 

The other Senators from the South did not play very prominent parts on 



XXXVI. CONGKESS — SESSION 1860-61. 21 

the Congressional stage. Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, was expected 
to fight the Union battle, but failed at the critical time ; he had large ex- 
perience in Congressional life, but, just elevated to the Senate, he rather 
pursued what he believed was the popular doctrine. He has since been 
a Colonel in the rebel service ; he is the only Southern Senator, unless it 
may be Wigfall, Toombs, and Chesnut, who has had any military ex- 
perience. The Senators from Delaware, Bayard and Saulsburt, were 
able men ; the latter is still Senator ; the former, a logical thinker, accom- 
plished in Constitutional law, and a believer in the unforced association 
of the States, retired from his place disgusted with that public opinion 
which would not allow free speech as a means to restrain usurpation, and 
conclude the war. The Senators from South Carolina did not appear at 
the opening of Congress. Although that State did not pass her ordinance 
until the 17th of December, her Senators had resigned on the preceding 
10th. The Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Nicholson, ^vas no speaker ; 
he did not make his mark ; he had been, however, a successful editor. 
The other Senator, Ajtorew Johnson, evidently made his mark. Although 
he had fought the battle in Tennessee for Breckenridge against both 
Bell and Douglas, he came to this session as if he were a novus homo. 
He had great will and tenacity of purpose ; his efforts were vigorous and 
effective in repelling, from a Southern standpoint, the aggressive debate of 
the secessionists of the Senate ; his elocution was more forcible than fine 
— more discursive than elegant ; he hammered away with stalwart 
sti-ength upon his thought, until he brought it into shape. He rarely 
failed to produce the impression lie intended. He is destined to act the 
greatest part in our future. Douglas frequently ex;pressed his regret that 
Mr. Johnson had not made his blows tell earlier in the hot conflict of 
ideas in 1860, when Crittenden and himself were championing the inter- 
ests of all sections, and striving to avert in time the calamities which were 
pressed by extremists, North and South. Tlie Senators from Maryland, 
as from Kentucky, like their States, occupied middle ground, and were 
ever ready and eager to mediate. Would that the same could be said for 
Arkansas ! It was understood that at least one of her Senators, Mr, Se- 
bastian, was reluctant to follow South Carolina ; but the other, Mr. 
Johnson, was nothing loath thus to act. He has recently offered himself 
to the authorities, in a characteristic letter, frank and manly. Of the 
Missouri Senators, Mr. Polk went South, where his friends did not expect 
him to go ; and Mr. Green, unexpectedly, remained North in the seclu- 
sion of private life. The former had been Governor of his State, but 
was not otherwise greatly distinguished. The latter was a worthy foe- 
man of Douglas in the fierce struggle on the Lecompton question. Of the 



22 EIGHT TEAE8 IN C0NGEE8S. 

Northern Senators who were supposed to be most nearly allied with the 
South, were GwiN of California, Lane of Oregon and Bright of Indiana. 
The Senators from Florida were never regarded, however they seemed, 
as favorable to the secession movement ; though the Representative from 
Florida, Judge Hawkins, was the first to urge the withdrawal of his 
State as a reason for his indifference to compromise, and his refusal to 
serve on the committee. Messrs. Mallory and Yulee have since been 
somewhat conspicuous in the rebellion. Mr. Mallory has been Secre- 
tary of the Confederate Navy, but neither of them exerted any considera- 
ble influence at Washington in the direction of disunion during the winter 
of 1860-'61. 

Tlie Republican Senators of the thirty-sixth Congress who were most 
noted in the parliamentary conflict, were Hamlin, Fessenden, Hale» 
Clark, Collamer, Wilson, Sumner, Chandler, Seward, Cameron, 
Wade, Tru3ibull, Doolittle, and Baker — a galaxy of ability. Against 
these, as against the other extremists, stood Douglas, Crittenden, 
Johnson, Pugh, Latham, Fitch, Thompson, Rice, and Powell. How 
these tribunes labored to save the nation, only those present at their con- 
ferences know. I was often myself surprised at the speeches of Douglas 
and Pugh especially, mitigating the effect of the personal hberty bUls, 
and other infractions of the Constitution, so as to remove from the South- 
ern mind their hatred of the North thus engendered. Few in number, 
these men did all they could, even to the last Sabbath evening before the 
adjournment, when Mr. Crittenden electrified all by the glorious beauty 
of his last earnest, though ineffectual appeal for conciliation ! 

In the House, the elements of disunion can be discerned lying like geo- 
logical strata in sections and States. The State of Maryland furnished no 
member who was a secessionist per se ; although of the delegation Messrs. 
KuNKEL and Hughes seemed to be most sympathetic with the South. The 
same may be said of Kentucky ; though since, both Burnett and Symmes 
have been Confederate Senators. They were both eager for compromise 
during the winter of 1860, and Burnett even returned to the next Con- 
gress in 1861. He is now under bonds for treason. Virginia had Gar- 
nett, De Jarnette, and Edmundson, most disposed toward a Southern 
Confederacy. Bococke, Smith, Jenkins, Leake, and others, were deter- 
mined to go with the State. They did not labor to foster compromise. 
Pryor was at times with, and at times against us. I do not think he was 
as eager iis he seemed for a separate Confederacy. His career is known, 
with its vicissitudes. The fate of Jenkins, who was a classmate of mine, 
was what might have been expected. He fought bravely and died cour- 
ageously at the head of his cavalry. Rich in a patrimony of splendid 



XXXVI. CONGRESS — SESSION 1860-61. 23 

farms along the Ohio and Kanawha, surrounded by friends who elected 
him to Congress when barely of the constitutional age, just married to a 
daughter of the diplomatist Bowlin, of Paraguayan memory, and com- 
ing from that part of Virginia where secession was the exception, his 
fate has seemed to be as unnatural as it is sad. Ex-Governor Smith, of 
Virginia, was perhaps the most remarkable in the delegation. He was a 
fluent debater, ready at repartee, and brave to a fault. I am indebted to 
him for aiding in the special exchange of prisoners. Since the v/ar, when I 
could get little or no aid from Congress or our own Government, and scarcely 
a vote on my resolutions urging exchange, till too late to save the lives of 
thousands, I received prompt and generous aid from this inveterate insur- 
gent, which President Lincoln, when informed of it by me, reciprocated 
with the remark that " he would not be outdone by ' Extra Billy ' in ex- 
tra kindness." But the man among Virginians who labored most nobly 
for the Union, was John S. Millson of Norfolk. Boteler began the 
same good Avoi'k by moving for the Committee of Thirty-three ; but to 
Millson, more than to any one, did we owe the vote of Virginia in favor 
of the Union given in February, 1861. I franked, at his request, many 
thousands of his unanswerable speech to Vu'ginians. It was complained 
of us, by some of the Hotspurs, that we had had the census copied, to 
flood that State with Millson's speech. This was true. In this work 
no one gave to General Millson more effective aid than Siierrakd 
Clemens, of Wheeling, whose eloquence never did better execution, 
whose zeal never flagged, and whose Unionism never wavered. In looking 
over the names of members from other States, I wish I could find more 
than I do of whom this may be said. Not counting Tennessee, led by 
Nelson and Maynard, Kentucky with Mallory at its head, and Missouri, 
led by the gallant Phelps ; saving Joshua Hill of Georgia, Houston and 
Cobb of Alabama, Gilmer and Vance of North Carolina, Bouligny of 
Louisiana, Hamilton of Texas, and excepting such men as Branch of 
North Carolina, Eeuben Davis of Mississippi, Boyce of South Carolina, 
Rust of Arkansas, and Taylor of Louisiana, distrustful of secession as 
the cure for Southern ills, though less pronounced in their sentiments — 
excepting these and a few others not so conspicuous, the whole array of 
Southern talent, led by Miles, Gartrell, Pugh (of Alabama), Bo- 
cocKE, Garnett, Smith, Pryor, Cravtford, Curry, Hindman, McRae, 
Barksdale, Lamar, Wright, and Keitt — nearly all, except Pugh and 
Smith, young men — was thrown in favor of precipitate action, witliout any 
Zealand little attempt to compromise. Even such men asWiNSLow, Smith, 
and Branch, of N. C, and Reagan, of Texas, elected as conservatives 
against the disunion sentiments of their districts, cowered before this band 



24: EIGHT YEABS IN CONGRESS. 

of Southern talent and the pressure brought to bear from their homes — 
inspired by hopes of independence. The wives, daughters, and other fe- 
male connections of Southern members, were in the galleries constantly, to 
cheer by their presence and smiles the fervid efforts of these secession or- 
ators. For impetuous debate, there was Lamae, of Mississippi, scholarly 
and defiant ; for logical humor, Governor McRae, of the same State, suc- 
cessor to Gen. Quitman, one of the happiest of speakers, an original slave- 
trade secessionist, though educated in Ohio ; for parliamentary skirmish- 
ing, there was Bococke, of Virginia ; for vituperative philippic, there was 
Roger A. Pryok ; for courteous and beautiful elocution, Aeexander R. 
BoTELER, of Harper's Ferry ; for swaggering bravado, toned with an 
elegant phraseology, there was the vain and clever Keitt ; for smooth and 
trenchant dialectics, there was Porcher Miles, of Charleston, who earned 
his place in Congress by his care of the sick in the fever-stricken city of 
Norfolk in 1855 ; for statesmanslike and vigorous debate, there was 
Brakcii, of North Carolina ; for broad wit and hearty blows, there was 
Gilmer, of North Carolina ; for subtle ratiocination of the CaJhovm pat- 
tern, there was Pugh, of Alabama, who had all the pith, without the ar- 
tistic polish, of his colleague Curry ; for offensive and vivacious readiness, 
there was H indman, who almost alone of these leaders has been conspic- 
uous in the war. Branch, Ruffin, Keitt, Jenkins, Barksdale, and 
Rust have had important commands, and have all met that death of 
which they vaunted so much, rather than submit to the Federal authority. 

In looking over this roll, I cannot but regret that so much of genius, 
energy, and goodness have been misled to their own ruin and that of their 
States. Among the most eloquent of this remarkable body not thus mis- 
led, was Nelson, of Tennessee ; the most eccentric and indomitable genius 
for politics, was Emerson Etheridge ; the clearest heads for political 
economy, metaphysical refinement, and historic research, were William 
W. BoYCE and John S. Millson. 

If we go to the Republican side of the House, we find Corwin, of 
Ohio, incomparable for his fun, his pathos, and his soul-stirring eloquence ; 
Charles Francis Adams, with no readiness as a speaker, but a profound 
thinker ; Eli Thayer, as practical as a steam-engine, but with all his vast 
motive power occasionally getting out of order ; Morrill, of Vermont, 
whose skill in tariff calculations never flagged during the excitements of 
the war ; Roscoe Conkling, with rai'e gifts of ready and pui-e elocution ; 
John Hickman, of Pennsylvania, straightforward and dashing, with a schol- 
ar's taste hidden under the toga ; Thaddeus Stevens, tlie Metternich of 
Republicanism ; Galusha A. Grow, quick in the manual and saucy in 
bravado toward his opponents; Stanton, Sherman, and Bingham, from 



XXXVI. CONGRESS SESSION 1860-'61. 25 

Ohio, all men of experience in legislation, and leaders of the then rising 
party ; Colfax, of Indiana, who, like Gkow, rose to prominence by his 
championing with much fluency and energy the pietistic humanitarian- 
ism of his party ; Lovejoy, of Elinois, who cultivated an ignorance of 
parliamentary law in order to say the most indecorous things, and whose 
rugged vehemence, if not oratory, was taken for it by those who look more 
to the manner than the substance. These, with the afiable Speaker, Penning- 
ton, made up the phalanx upon which the Southern x;ohort hurled itself 
in debate. As I recall the scene which took place at my desk between 
Keitt and Grow, during the preceding Congress, after the hour of mid- 
night, when the passions of the time were incarnate in that Congress and 
at that hour ; as I repicture the fierce clutch and glaring eye, and the 
struggle between these heady champions, there come trooping down the 
aisles of memory, as there came trooping down the actual aisles of the 
House, the belligerent members, with Washburne of Illinois, and Pot- 
ter of Wisconsin, leading the one extreme, and Babksdale and Lamak 
leading the other ; then comes the melee — the struggle, the pale face of 
the Speaker calling to order, the sergeant-at-arms rushing into the area 
before the clerk's desk, the mace as his symbol of authority, with its silver 
eagle, moving up and down on the wave of passion and conflict ; then the 
dead hush of the hot heart, and glare of defiance across the hall ! As 
this scene is revivified, looking at it through the red storm of the Avar, I 
cannot but think that then and there was epitomized all that has made 
that war bloody and desperate. Then, too, there rise up the forms of 
those who were then accounted moderate and middle men, like Davis 
and HoLMAN of Indiana, McClernand and Logan of Illinois, Mallort 
and Stevenson of Kentucky, Pendleton and Vah,andigham of Ohio, 
Florence and Montgomery of Pennsylvania, Sickles and Cochrane 
of New York, who stood, like Douglas, Bigler, Latham, Pugh, John- 
son, and Crittenden, in the Senate, as a breakwater against the contend- 
ing tides. 

From these disjecta memhra of this remarkable Congress, the reader 
may gather some idea of the force and energy, tact and eloquence, passion 
and prejudice, which composed it. 

Some of the great questions which arose were foreshadowed in the 
President's Message ; for instance, the power to coerce a State. But there 
were other questions, concerning the acquisition of territory, and the gov- 
ernment of the territories ; the effect of the decisions of the Supreme 
Court ; various amendments of the Constitution so as to prohibit Congress 
and the people from impairing the right of property in slaves, etc. ; the 
fugitive slave law ; fugitives from justice ; the right of transit in free States 



26 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

of persons -with slaves ; the nullifying acts of State Legislatures ; the aboli- 
tion of slavery and the internal slave trade ; changes by constitutional 
amendments in the Executive office and veto power ; the restoration of the 
equilibrium between the slave and free States ; the voluntary division 
of slave States into two or more States ; giving the slave States a vote 
on all questions of slavery ; naaking the amendments proposed unamend- 
able ; granting to the States power to appoint the Federal officers in their 
midst; the peaceable Avithdrawal of States, and apportionment of the 
public debt ; dual Senates and dual Executive ; the organization at once 
of the remaining territories ; the foreign slave trade ; the acquisition of 
foreign territory by a vote of two-thii-ds ; questions as to ordinances of 
secession, and their effect ; preventing Africans from ever becoming 
citizens ; a constitutional convention ; these and many other questions 
were debated, and referred to the Committees of Thirteen in the Senate 
and Thirty-three in the House. They were the result of anxious cogita- 
tion on the problems which threatened to dispart the country. They 
remain upon the records to illustrate the variety and magnitude of the in- 
terests spi-inging out of the institution of slavery, and the duplex charac- 
ter of our State and Federal Governments. They were, for the last time, 
thrust into the legislative tribunal for tranquil solution, before the conflict 
in the forum of reason should be replaced by 

" the intestine sbock 



And furious close of civil butchery." 

The public record shows what result Avas reached by these committees, 
or rather how rcsultless were their labors. Mr. Corwin, for a majority, 
presented his resolutions and bills ; Mr. Adams declined to recommend even 
his own propositions, inasmuch as he believed that the South would ac- 
cept nothing that he could offer. Washbdrne of Wisconsin, and Tap- 
pan of New Hampshire, of the committee, offered nothing by way of 
compromise. The conservative men, with Taylor, Phelps, Rust, 
"WuiTELY, WiNSLOW, Nelson, Hasiilton, and others of the committee, 
wished to go further than Governor CoRWix. They recommended the 
Crittenden proposition. The votes on the Corwin measures were strange- 
ly incongruous. The vote on the Crittenden proposition was well de- 
fined, but is not so well understood. From the frequency of inquiries 
since the war as to this latter vote, the people were eager to know upon 
whom to fix the. responsibility of its failure. It may as well be stated 
that all other propositions, whether of the Peace Convention, or the border 
State jprojct^ or the measures of the committees, were comparatively of 
no moment ; for the Crittenden proposition Avas the only one which could 
hav(? arrested the struggle. It would have received a larger vote than 



XXXVI. CONGRESS — SESSION 1860-61. 2T 

any other. It would have had more effect in moderating Southern excite- 
ment. Even Davis, Toombs, and others of the Gulf States, would have 
accepted it. I have talked with Mr. Crittenden frequently on this point. 
Not only has he confirmed the public declarations of Douglas and Pdgh, 
and the speech of Toombs himself, to this effect, but he said it was so un- 
derstood in committee. At one time, Avhile the committee was in session, 
he said : " Mr. Toombs, will this compromise, as a remedy for all wrongs 
aud apprehensions, be acceptable to you?" Mr. Toombs with some 
profanity replied, " Not by a good deal ; but my State wUl accept it, and 

1 will follow my State to ." And he did. 

I will not open the question whether it was wise then to offer accom- 
modations ; it may not be profitable now to ask Avhethcr the millions of 
young men whose bodies are maimed, or whose bones are decaying under 
the sod of the South, and the heavy load of public debt under whicli wo 
sweat and toU, have their compensation in black liberty. Nor will I dis- 
cuss whether the blacks have been bettered by their precipitate freedom, 
passing, as so many have, from slavery through starvation and suflering to 
death. There is no comfort in the reflection that the negroes will be extermi- 
nated, with the extermination of slavery. The real point is, could not this 
Union have been made permanent by timely settlement, instead of cemented 
by fraternal blood and military rule ? By an equitable partition of the terri- 
tory this was possible. We had then 1,200,000 square miles. The Crit- ■ 
TENDEN proposition would have given the North 900,000 of these square 
miles, and applied the Chicago doctrines to that quantity. It would have 
left the remaining fourth, substantially, to be carved out as free or slave 
States, at the option of the people when the States were admitted. This 
proposition the radicals denounced. Notwithstanding the then President 
elect was in a minority of a million of the popular vote, they were de- 
termined, as Mr. Chase wrote to Portsmouth, Ohio, from the Peace Con- 
vention, to use the power while they had it, and prevent a settlement. It 
has been stated, to rid the Republicans of the odium of not averting the 
war when that was possible, that the Northern members tendered to the 
Southern the Crittenden Compromise, which the South rejected. This 
is untrue. It was tendered by Southern Senators and Northern Demo- 
crats to the Republicans. They, in conjunction with some half dozen re- 
cusant Southern Senators, rejected it. It was voted upon but once in the 
House, when it received 80 votes against 113. These eighty votes were 
exclusively Democrats and Southern Americans, like Gilmer, Vance, and 
others. Mr. Briggs, of New York, was the only one not a Democrat 
who voted for it. He had been an old Whig aud never a Republican. 
The Republican roll, beginning with Adams and ending with Woodruff, 



28 EIGHT TEAKS EST CONGRESS. 

was a unit against it. Intermingled witli them was one Southern ex- 
tremist, General Hindman, who desired no settlement. There were 
many Southern men who did not vote, believing that unless the Republi- 
cans, who were just acceding to power, favored it, its adoption would be a 
delusion. 

The plan adopted by the Republican Senators to defeat it, was by 
amendment and postponement. On the 14th and 15th of January they 
cast all their votes against its being taken up ; and on the 16th, when it 
came up, Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, moved to strike it out and in- 
sert something which he knew would neither be successful nor acceptable. 
The vote on Clark's amendment was 25 to 23 ; every " ay " being a 
Republican, and every " no," except Kennedy and Crittenden (Ameri- 
cans), being Democrats. On this occasion, six Southern Senators, in- 
cluding Benjamin and Wigfall, did not vote. They could have de- 
feated Mr. Clark's motion. In reference to this vote, we have the tes- 
timony of President Johnson, in a speech on the expulsion of Senator 
Bright, January 31, 1862, to this effect: 

" I sat right behind Mr. Benjamin, and I am not sure that my worthy 
friend [Mr. Lathajm] was not close by when he refused to vote ; and I 
said to him, 'Mr. Benjamin, why do you not vote? Why not save 
this proposition, and see if we cannot bring the country to it? ' He gave 
me rather an abrupt answer, and said he would control his own actions 
without consulting me or anybody else. Said I : ' Vote and show your- 
self an honest man.' As soon as the vote was taken, he and others tele- 
graphed South, ' We cannot get any compromise.' " 

Doubtless the rest of the six Senators had the same sinister motive 
for their reticence in voting and readiness in telegi'aphing. But their re- 
creancy does not excuse the body of the Republicans. Nor do I kno^v^ 
that now, since the collapse of the rebellion, they are so anxious to be ex- 
cused. I only write the facts of history, not to justify or condemn. 

When this result was announced, universal gloom prevailed. The 
people favored this compromise. Petitions by thousands of citizens were 
showered upon Congress, for its passage. Had it received a majority 
only, they would have rallied and sustained those who desired peace and 
Union. One more earnest appeal was made to the Republicans. General 
Cameron answered it by moving a reconsideration. His motion came up 
on the 18th, when he voted against his own motion. It was carried, how- 
ever, over the votes of the Republicans, although Wigfall voted with 
them. When it was again up on the 2d of March, 1861, the Southern 
States were nearly^ all gone ; even then it was lost by one vote only, j 
But on that occasion all the Democrats were for, and all the Repub- ' 



XXXVI. OONGKESS — SESSION 1860-'61. 29 

Hcans against it. The truth is, th^re was nothing but sneers and scepti- 
cism from the Republicans at any settlement. They broke down every 
proposition. They took the elements of conciliation out of the Peace Con- 
vention before it assembled. Senators Haklan and Chandler were es- 
pecially active in preparing that Convention for a failure. If every South- 
ern man and every Northern Democrat had voted for this proposition, it 
would have required some nine Republicans for the requisite two-thirds. 
Where were they ? Dreaming with Mr. Seward of a sixty-days struggle, 
or arranging for the division of the patronage of Administration. The only 
Southern Senators who seemed against any settlement were Iverson and 
WiGFALL ; that no man will challenge if he will refer to the Globe (1st 
part, 35th Congress, p. 270) for the testimony of Douglas and Pugh, 
and to Mr. Bigler's Bucks County speech, September 17, 18G3. The lat- 
ter knew it to be true, when he said that — 

" Wben the struggle was at its height in Georgia between Robert 
Toombs for secession, and A. H. Stephens against it, had those men in 
the Committee of Thirteen, who are now so blameless in their own esti- 
mation, given us their votes, or even three of them, Stephens would have 
defeated Toojibs, and secession would have been prostrated. I heard 
Mr. Toombs say to Mr. Douglas that the result in Georgia was staked 
on the action of the Committee of Thirteen. If it accepted the Critten- 
den pi'oposition, Stephens would defeat him ; if not, he would carry the 
State out by 40,000 majority. The three votes from the Republican side 
would have carried it at any time ; but Union and peace in the balance 
against the Chicago platform were sure to be found wanting." 

If other testimony were wanting, I would ask a suspension of judgment 
until those facts, better kno\vn to Southern men, transpire. The inter- 
course about to be reestablished between the sections will cumulate the 
proof. It will also bring to the light many facts showing that, while 
President Buchanan was working for the Peace Conference, while Vir- 
ginia had been gained to our side with her ablest men, there were even 
then in the Cabinet those who not only encoui'aged revolt, but foiled hy 
letter and speech the efforts of the Unionists at Washington and Rich- 
mond. Those who sought to counteract the schemes of secession, were 
themselves checkmated by men now in authority. These letters and acts 
are referred to in the recent speech of General Blair. They will be and 
should be brought into the sunshine, if only to vindicate the true Union 
men of that dark hour, and to condemn those who have since made so 
much pretension with so much zealotry, coupled with Unexampled cruelty 
and tyranny. ^ 

Whether, therefore, you consult the public record, or go beyond its veil 




30 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

and consult those who knew the elements at work in the committees and 
in social life, one leading fact always stands stark and bold before you : 
that with the aid of a handful of secessionists per se, the whole body of the 
Republicans were, as President Johnson described Senator Clabk, when 
he defeated the Crittenden resolution by his amendment, " acting out 
their policy." In the light of subsequent events, that policy was devel- 
oped ; it was the destruction of slavery at the peril of war and disunion ; 
or, as Senator Douglas expressed it, " a disruption of the Union, believ- 
ing it would draw after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile 
insurrections, and finally the utter extermination of slavery in all the 
Southern States." 




SPEECHES. 



I. 

FINANCES, TARIFFS, ETC 



COMPARISON OF EXPENSES BETWEEN 1858 AND 1864, AND OF THE 
TAXATION OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA IN 1858. 

I INSERT the following extracts, not so mucli for their importance, as to 
show the astounding disparity of our revenues and expenditures between 
the years 1858 and 1864. It is curious to see how sixty-five millions 
startled us in the one year, and how contemptible it seemed six years 
.later ! The first speech was delivered on the 12th of June, 1858, and the 
last on the 2d day of June, 1864 : 

Gentlemen cannot complain of our withholding protection to ocean 
commerce. The West had been generous in this regard. If she were 
more niggardly, she might have had more consideration. She does not 
" calculate" so much as our Atlantic States. It is high time she began 
it. Her ovm commerce, on river and lake, far exceeds that of the sea- 
board States. Her commerce is not so much endangered from the hostili- 
ty of other nations ; but it is in equal danger from the elements, from 
snag and rock, from storm and fire. I voted your ten sloops — not so 
much because I feared a war as because' I wanted the peace kept, and 
your commerce protected from outrage by search and seizure. * * 

Mr. Chairman, I am one of those who beh'eve that the splendor of a 
nation does not lie in the wealth and extravagance of its pampered me- 
tropolis. The true glory of this nation is to be found elsewhere. Her new 
States, made up of men of simple habits, without artificial wants — these 
are the blossoms and fruits of our " secular majesty and magnificent 
strength." I am opposed to all these extravagant expenditures for the 



82 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGKESS. 

benefit of one section and of this metropolis. Let our appropriations take 
a wider scope and a more useful object. 

In discussing unjust and unequal appropriations, Mr. Cox said : 

There is a power arising in the "West which will one day — not far 
ahead, either — after the next census, in 1860, perhaps, correct these 
evils, while it looks' after its own interests, so shamelessly neglected. A 
few admonitory facts in this connection may not be amiss. The present 
rate of increase of the population of the western States, particularly of the 
liorthwestern, indicates that by 1863, when the new congressional ap- 
portionment will be in operation, there will be on this floor, representing 
what may be called western interests, one hundred and twenty-five mem- 
bers out of two hundred and forty-one, if such should be the number of 
the House. Whatever the number, those States which have a common 
interest in western agriculture and commerce will have a preponderance. 
The Northwest alone will outnumber New York and New England. 
Where it now has fifty-three, it will have, under the next census, eighty 
— nearly one-third of the whole number of Representatives. This will 
command a controlling influence. It is to be hoped it will be sufficient to 
stop the suicidal disunion cry of North and South. Let the West repose 
in its might. It can afibrd to wait. The lines of empire are on the face 
of the cradled Hercules. 

Thirty-eight years ago General Cass visited a village of ten or twelve 
houses, containing sixty people, by means of a bark canoe, by way of the 
Wisconsin River and Green Bay. That village of 1820 is the Chicago of 
1858, with one hundred and fifty thousand people. It is the terminus of 
more railways than any other city of the Union, and has become the great 
grain depot of the world ! This marvellous increase of one city is but the 
little forefinger, as it were, pointing out to the greater West of a greater 
future than has yet been dreamed, when there shall be opened up to emi- 
gi'ation and production the great plains of America which lie between 
the meridian line which terminates the States of Louisiana, Ai-kansas, 
Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, on the west, and the Rocky Mountains, 
out of which twenty-four new States will arise with th e same abundance 
of resources which marks the States of the Mississippi valley ! 

It is a common practice, in discussions of this character, to show the 
expenses of our Government when we were young, and, by contrast with 
the present, to decry the present lack of economy. One of my colleagues 
[Mr. Sherman], in an able speech this session, after giving table after 
table of figures showing our expenses in the past, and comparing them 
with the present, did not give suflicient heed, in my humble judgment, 
to the great increase in all the departments of industry, and in all the re- 
sources of our fast-growing commonwealths. Here is a sample of this sort 
of fallacy taken from his speech : 

" The expenses of this year, the first under Mr. Buchanan's adminis- 
tration, will be $5,000,000 more than the entire expenses of the Govern- 
ment from its foundation to the close of Jefferson's administration. The 
aggregate expenses for the first twenty years of our Government were 
$78,303,762 ; and I have already shown that, this year, the expenses ex- 
ceed $83,000,000." 



FDTAITCES, TARIFFS, ETC. 33 

Such statements prejudice without convincing. There is no compari- 
son to be drawn betrween such a remote era as the first twenty years of 
our Government and the present time. Since then we have had steam- 
ships, steamboats, steam sea vessels of war, steam sea mail service. We 
have added since then to our area five-fold. We have more than doubled the 
States, and we have now six Territories. Within a half century what 
have we done ? Moved the Indians west and further west of the Missis- 
sippi. We have given them missionaries and whiskey, money and schools ; 
and our Interior Department are trying to civihze all the War Depart- 
ment do not murder. We have made om' land the principal cotton and 
great grain-growing covmtry of the world. Our marine now exceeds that 
of England in tonnage. Our manufactures now compete with Europe in 
South America and the Orient. We have increased our numbers nearly 
six-fold, for in 1808 our population was about six miUions ; we have in- 
creased our federal expenses about twelve-fold, but our annual private in- 
come fifteen-fold ! 

There is no fairness in tables like those of my colleague [Mr. Sher- 
man], which institute comparisons between different years, and which 
take the increase of population only as the test of a true ratio of increase 
in expenses. Conclusions from such premises may well be called " mon- 
sters of imagination begotten on a cloud of statistics." Why, it would be 
hardly fair to compare the expenses of ten or five years ago with those of 
the present. Last year our expenses were over sixty-five millions. In 
1850 they were only $37,000,000. " What prodigality ! " says the sophist. 
He ought not to say it, till he remembers what empires we have opened 
since 1850, what new and great calls are made on our Treasury for the 
proper protection of added interests. In 1830 we had an expenditure of 
over thu'teen millions. " Now," says the sophist, " it is nearly six times 
as much." Think of one fact in this connection, and you will not hastily 
conclude on such premises. In 1830 a writer in Philadelphia glories over 
the wonderful fact that whereas, in 1824, only about three thousand dollars 
in gold from domestic sources was sent to the Mint, then, in 1830, it had 
increased to $130,000. But, let me add, what a change since 1830 ! 
Now, our domestic yield of gold exceeds fifty millions per annum ! There 
is but one criterion for the increase of our expenses. It is not the increase 
of our population ; such a ratio is an unfair test of true economy : but it 
is the increase of all the interests in view of our increased national 
wealth, area, and importance. Whenever these interests and the honor 
of the nation do not demand it, our expenses must be kept down with 
rigid firmness. 

The expectations of the Government from the last tarifi" have been 
foiled by the financial troubles. The expenses of the Government for this 
year have been somewhat increased by the Utah troubles, as well as by 
the naturally growing demands of our .growing nation. It becomes us to 
meet these expenses in a patriotic spirit ; to furnish means to preserve un- 
tarnished our national honor. Compared to the Govei-nments of the Old 
World, loaded as they are with debts, our condition, at the worst, is hap- 
py. A hundred millions is no debt to a nation like ours, with its resources 
and its energies. We throw ofi" such debts as lightly as a summer gar- 
ment. 

3 



34 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGKESS. 

Far be it from me to encourage a system of national debt. If we need 
money just now in our exchequer, let us borrow it ; trusting, as we may 
do with reason, to the revival of business already begun, which will in- 
sure before long a revenue sufficient for expenses. Far better borrow^^ 
than fill a treasury to overflowing by a high tariff. Let the present tariff 
be fully tested ; and if it fail, in a fair season, to give us a sufficient rev- 
enue, then let it be modified to suit the exigency./ The reverses of 1837 
were terrible. The country staggered under them for years. The 
revei'ses of 1857 are comparatively easy to be borne. We have now a 
better banking system, a more healthful curtailment of private expenditure, 
and a better system of public finance — the sub-treasury. We had Dot 
these twenty years ago. Already the disease of last year is wearing out. 
It is found not to be chronic. Individuals have economized manfully. 
Our decreased imports — which are the very cause of our loan bills and 
lank treasury — show a recovery going on at once healthful and invigor- 
ating. So that our seeming disaster of an empty treasury is the index of 
a restorative process which will bring prosperity. 

I hope that the economy which the people are now practising in their 
own troubles, may be practised by our Government in its embarrass- 
ments. We need to be reminded by misfortune of the evils of extrava- 
gance. This is an age of luxury. Could the people who have sent us 
here glance at this Hall, ornamented with all the bedizenment of gilt and 
paint ; could they hear but one discussion on the monster schemes and 
inordinate extravagance of the last Congress ; and believe half their eye 
saAV or ear heard, there would be more excitement on economical than terri- 
torial affairs. Their sui'prise would but indicate a fact, that our Govern- 
ment and its rulers are far in advance of the people in the vices, and far 
behind them in the virtues, of republican life. That simplicity which ob- 
tains among the masses in New England, in New York, in the West and 
South, has but little reflection either in the social life or political legisla- 
tion of the metropolis. 

In saying this much, I am not indifferent to the proud fact that our 
governments, Federal and State, are yet the models, in an economical 
view, to which the reformers of England and the continents point, for the 
guidance of their own governments. No man can read without patriotic 
emotion the plaudits of De Tocqueville, as he discourses of the simplicity 
and economy of our system. Again and again have Cobden, Ilume, and 
Roebuck, from the English hustings and in Parliament, referred to these 
United States for lessons in an economy which is liberal without being 
extravagant, and which has striven to be discriminating without being 
mean. It was only a few weeks ago that Mr. Bright bemoaned, in a let- 
ter to Birmingham, the suffering consequent upoa the increasing taxes of 
England. He could find no remedy except in the diminution of their 
augmenting expenditure. He startled the English people by showing that 
their Government was now spending £20,000,000 sterling more than they 
were spending a few years back, and that since 1835, when Wellington 
and Peel had charge of the Government, their military expenses alone 
had doubled ; and then, pointing to this nation, he said : 

" This year, we shall i^ise at least £50,000,000 sterling more than 
will be required to be raised by an equal population living not in England, 
but the United States of America ! " 



FINAJSrCES, TAEIFFS, ETC. 35 

Two hundred and fifty million dollars is the burden which twenty-seven 
million people pay in Great Britain over and above what the same num- 
ber would pay in America, under our Government. Can we Avonder, 
then, that where the burdens are so heavy, and the political privileges so 
few,..so many are now considering the propriety and advantage of emi- 
gration ; and that at this moment the unemployed of the manufacturing 
districts of England are appealing to the Queen for an extensive system 
of free emigration? 

If such be tte attractive force of our economy, how carefully should 
we guard it ! We should not be content with the flattering contrasts 
we can draw with the Old World ! If we find in our expenditure a dan- 
gerous augmentation, let us apply the canons of our party platforms to 
practical legislation, and lop off the excrescences where we can. At 
least, let us protest where we cannot lop off, and so guard our future 
against deficiency bills, and loan bills, as to secure the greatest economy 
with the least government possible, consistent with security. 



TARIFF m 1864. 

THE CONStlMERS, THE SERFS OF CAPITAL. XEW RELATIONS OF PAPER MONEY TO THE TARIFF. 

PROTECTED AND UNPROTECTED STATES AND CLASSES. ROBBERY OF CONSUMERS. RAPACITT 

OF MONOPOLY. 

Mr. Chairman, the honorable gentleman [Mr. Mokrill] who reports 
ed this bill, has just assured us that it is only a war measure of temporary 
duration. Feeling the necessity of apologizing for the bill, which is an 
aggrava.tion of the tariff of 1862, the gentleman terms it a war measure. 
If it were not that we are already immersed in a war whose excitements 
are so absorbing that no time is left for reflection upon other subjects of 
policy, this tariff might well be called a war measure. Its oppressive 
character is enormous enough to produce revolution. 

On the 25th of February, 1861, I came to this House from a sick bed 
to protest against the tariff bill then pending. I denounced it as a great 
fiscal tyranny, a mountainous burden on the West. While favoring a 
revenue taritl' to meet our then small expenditures, I opposed bounties, 
special advantages, and class legislation. I showed that the bill as then 
designed raised bounties from the consumers of the West and South, to 
be paid to the iron-masters of Pennsylvania, and the manufacturers of 
New England. That biU was urged as a measure of protection, protec- 
tion to western interests. I then said " that the West could take care of 
itself. It is rich by nature in its resources ; and if the people of Penn- 
sylvania cannot live by working their forges, with their own natural re- 
sources ; aud if the people of New England cannot live by working their 
spindles, with their natural ingenuity, without the aid of other classes of 
industry and the bounty of the Government, let them move to the West, 
and there the God of nature AviU protect them in the cultivation of the 
soil, if they have the industry to work and the frugality to save." 



36 EIFHT YEAES EST CONGEESS. 

Since then, sir, tliat tariff so burdensome has been enormously in- 
creased. Our debt, then so small, being only $67,281,591, with an in- 
terest of only about four millions, was, on the 15th day of March, 1864, 
$1,580,201,744. On that day we had a paper currency, including cer- 
tificates of indebtedness, amounting to $779,683,922. Since then these 
sums have been increased. Figures fail to express the magnitude of our 
burdens and liabilities. Nor do I intend to complain of them now. The 
war has brought them. Neither will I discuss now who are responsible 
for either the v.-ar or its incidents. I accept the existing' facts. Having 
voted against the high tariffs, the paper system, and the whole scheme of 
finance in all its stages, I am not in anywise responsible for their exist- 
ence. We are spending $3,000,000 a day ; $1,000,000,000 a year. Ir- 
respective of loans, we are striving to meet this enormous outlay by the 
tax bill, which is to raise $200,000,000 per year, and the tariff, which 
will meet perhaps $50,000,000 more. 

I do not oppose the raising of these sums. The credit of the Gov- 
ernment demands it. I accept events, but I do not accept every plan to 
raise these sums, nor any plan because proposed by the dominant party 
or its committees in this House. We have no business here as Repi^ 
sentatives if we do not question every plan, especially if it affects unfairly 
our own State or constituents. I am not a Representative, but a slave, 
if I yield to the clamor of one section or class for benefits which affect 
unjustly another section or class. I do not represent the rich, they can 
take care of themselves ; nor the poor altogether ; but a principle w];iich 
requires that taxation shall fall equally on all : that the benefits of legis- 
lation shall not inure to one class, and its burdens be laid upon another. 
I propose to prove that this is the effect of the existing and proposed 
legislation. 

By the joint resolution passed a few weeks ago, we increased the tariff 
rates of 1862 fifty per cent. The present biU, while repealing that reso- 
lution after the 1st of July, does not lessen but increases largely the same 
rates. It adds to them, on most articles, the amount of the internal tax. 
The duties are paid in gold. This adds the premium of gold to the tariff 
rates. So that in considering the effect of these measures I must con- 
sider them as affected by the paper money which has been showered upou 
the country with such prodigality. 

What, then, are the benefits accruing to the manufacturing classes, 
and the burdens imposed upon the agricultural and consuming classes, by 
the present tariff system and a depreciated paper currency? What, par- 
ticularly, are their operations upon the industrial interests of New Eng- 
land and the western States as contrasted? 

Before resorting to an arithmetical demonstration to show the effects 
of the tariff and "greenback" systems combined, I propose a few self- 
evident propositions as the basis of my calculations : 

1. In the commercial transactions between two foreign countries, in 
fact aU countries, the basis of exchange must be specie, and the currency 
of the countries must be reduced to their par values. 

At present the gold currency of the United States contains more alloy 
that that of Great Britain, the difference in their values being that of nine 
cents on a dollar ; eight and three quarters according to Tate's Cambist. 



FINAIfCES, TARIFFS, ETC. 37 

This rate varies in actual commercial transactions according to the de- 
mand and supply of exchange. Therefore, in order to equalize the gold 
currencies of the two countries, it is necesssry to add eight and three 
quarters per cent, to each American dollar. This will make it equal 
in value to a dollar of the same weight in the gold currency of England. 
In other words, the merchant in New York who would pay $1 to the 
merchant in Liverpool, must send him $1.08|- of our gold. The exchange 
on England generally ranges above this rate. It depends upon demand 
and supply, and the freight and risk of transporting specie. 

2. If the currency of one country is a depreciated paper currency, and 
of tlie other specie, the rate of exchange is according to the depreciation of 
the paper currency of one country below the gold or standard specie cur- 
rency of the other. For example, the United States paper currency, as 
compared with United States gold, the latter being, to say the least, at a 
premium of sixty per cent., taking the average of the past year, is 
depreciated thirty-seven and a half per cent. That is, it takes $1.60 of 
United States paper to buy $1 of United States gold ; that is to say, $1 
m United States paper is worth only sixty-two and a half cents in United 
States gold. 

Now, in order to pay $1 in Liverpool in United States paper at the 
above depreciation, namely, in the ratio of $1.60 for $1, it would require 
$1.74. To the demonstration : 

$1 08 J of American gold is equal to $1 of English gold. 

60 rate of depreciation of American paper as compared with American gold. 



65 25 
108 75 

$114: 00 



Therefore the rate of exchange between the paper currency of the 
United States and the gold currency of England is seventy-four per cent. 
In other words, it takes $174 of United States depreciated paper in New 
York to pay $100 in Liverpool. 

And this result corresponds with the actual market prices of gold and 
exchange. I see in the stock market of Boston, as reported in the Bos- 
ton Courier on February 29, 1864, that gold was quoted at $1.58-|- to $1.59, 
and exchange on England, sixty days to run, at 73 and 74. 

Mr. Prutn. Exchange is more than that now. It is a dollar. 

Mr. Cox. Of course, if gold is at ninety, as it is now, the price of ex- 
change rises in the ratio of its increase. Therefore, in order to buy $100 
worth of gold in England the Americam merchant must pay $174 in the 
depreciated paper currency of the United States when gold is quoted only 
at $1.60. 

When he brings that $100 worth of goods to this country, in order to 
reimburse himself he must sell it for $174 of our currency with freight 
and duty superadded. 

The Government requires that these duties shall be paid in gold. 
The importing merchant, therefore, must purchase the gold with depre- 
ciated f aper, paying for it the market premium. 



w 



38 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

For instance, if the duty on the merchandise is 40 per cent, ad valorem^ 
or $40 on each $100 of value imported, he must add 60 per cent, to the 
$40, which is equal to $24. That sum added to the $40 is equal to $64. 
Thus, in order to pay a specie duty of 40 per cent, on $100 of merchandise, 
the merchant must pay in paper, depreciated in the ratio of $160 to $100, 
a duty of $64 or 64 per cent. To which is to be added the increased duty 
of 50 per cent, on the former rates, under the recent joint resolution, 
which would add $20 more to the cost ; but as that, too, has to be paid in 
gold and the gold purchased, there would be $12 more to be added, 
making $32. 

Now, let me demonstrate what it wiU cost in United States paper, 
depreciated only in the ratio of $160 to $100, to import merchandise 
costing $100 in England : 

First cost ■ $100 

Difference of exchange 74 

Duty of 40 per cent, exchanged to paper 64 

Fifty per cent, additional duty recently put on, exchanged to paper 32 

Actual cost, exclusive of freight and other charges 2Y0 

Deduct first cost 100 

Leaving additional cost in consequence of exchange, duties, and paper money. . . . $1*70 

Tlius the consumers, in consequence of the depreciation of paper money 
and the duties payable in gold, have to pay $270, or 170 per cent, in 
addition to the cost, for every $100 worth of goods imported from England 
into this country. To this is to be added the freight and charges, and at 
least 10 per cent, profits to the importer. 

4. The elements of cost, therefore, upon merchandise imported from 
foreign countries into the United States, are : 1, the first cost abroad ; 2, 
difference of exchange ; 3, duty ; 4, freight, insurance, and other charges 
of importation ; and, 5, Hhc importer's profits on all the preceding items, 
which we reckon at 10 per cent. 

5. At this point of cost the imported article comes in competition with 
the corresponding article of the home manufacturer in the American mar- 
ket. And the aggregate of the items above mentioned constitutes the pro- 
tection or bounty which the tariff system gives to the manufacturer. The 
consumers of the domestic article, of course, pay this bounty to the manu- 
facturer. This is now reduced to an axiom in political economy. It is 
as clear as the proposition that the object of a tariff for protection is to 
increase the price of the article. If this were not the case, who would care 
for protective bounties? Not the manufacturer, certainly. If not he, 
who then? 

6. Thus the system taxes the labor and capital employed in one class 
of industrial interests for the benefit of the labor and capittil employed in 
another class of industrial interests. 

In order to demonstrate by facts and figures the truth ")f the foregoing 
propositions, I propose to take three descriptions of iron, namely : pig, 
railroad, and bar, showing the quantities imported, the cost in England, 
and the cost in this country in depreciated paper, with duties, freight, and 
importer's profits superadded. I omit insurance and other minor ckargea 



FINANCES, TARIFFS, ETC. ^ 39 

of importation. I take the importations of 1861 as the basis of my cal- 
culations, because I have not at hand the importations of later years. 
The principles upon whieh the demonstrations are made apply to the im- 
portation of all years. My calculations are also based upon gold at the 
rate of $1G0 in the depreciated paper currency of the United States. 
The rates of duty are those of the tariifof 1862, without adding thereto 
the 50 per cent, on those rates of the recent law, aad without adding the 
increase proposed by the present bill. I take these different kinds of iron 
because the specific duty required to be paid upon each of them can easily 
be reduced to the ad valorem standard. Also, for the purpose of econo- 
mizing in figures, I will call the rate of exchange between England and 
this country 70 per cent, instead of 74, which will be more favorable to 
the manufacturer. 

Pig Iron. — Quantity imported ui 1861, 39,5382^ tons ; cost $14 per 
ton ; duty $6 per ton, or 43 per cent, ad valorem, eqnal to 68 ner cent, in 
paper money. 

Cost in England $542,952 

Difl'erence of exchange at '70 per cent 380,066 

Duty 43 per cent, in gold, 68 per cent, in paper 369,207 

Freight at $6 per ton 236,231 

Importer's profit 10 per cent, on first cost, exchange, duty, and 

freight 156,845 

$1,685,301 



Thus, when this quantity of iron, with its original cost, difference of 
exchange, fi'eight, and duties paid, is offered in the market of the United 
States, it costs $1,685,301. At that point it comes in competition with 
the product of the home manufacturer ; consequently his protection, or 
bounty, is the difference between tlie first cost and the cost Avhen the for- 
eign iron enters into competition with him in the home market. 

Let us see what that protection or bounty is : 

From cost in our market $1,685,301 

Deduct first cost in England 542,952 



Leaving a bounty on same quantity to the home manufacturer of. . $1,142,349 

or 210 per cent. 

Same calculation on a specie basis : 

Cost of pig iron imported in 1861 $542,952 

Difference of exchange at 9 per cent 48,865 

Duty at 43 per cent 233,409 

Freight at §6 per ton 236,231 

Importer's profits at 10 per cent 106,151 

$1,167,608 



At this point of cost, it comes in competition in our market with the 
article produced by the home manufacturer. 



40 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

From its cost in our market .* $1, 16*7,608 

Deduct original cost abroad 542,952 



$624,656 
or 115 per cent. 

[Mr. Cox pursued a similar system of demonstration with respect to 
railroad and bar iron, cotton and woollen manufactures, &c., a compendi- 
ous statement of which is placed in tabular form hereafter.] 

In these calculations I have embraced only three descriptions of iron. 
The importation of iron in all forms amounts to millions in value more, 
which comes in competition with the home manufacture of similar descrip- 
tions of articles. Thus my calculation fails to give aU the enormous prof- 
its realized by the home manufacturer on the article of u*on. 

In order to pay those exorbitant profits to the iron manufacturers, 
labor and capital employed in other pursuits of industry must necessarily 
be taxed in corresponding proportion. 

" But we must have revenues. The war must not suffer for the want 
of money," says some one with more zeal than reflection. Now, will some 
adept in figures please inform me what proportion of this immense sum of 
$48,094,548 realized by the home manufacturer on iron goes into the 
Treasury to support the war and pay the expenses of the Government? 
The whole revenue of the tarifl' on all articles is not much greater. The 
truth is, the revenue is not only lessened, the Treasury defrauded, and the 
people deluded by this clamor for bounties, but, by oppressive and unjust 
discrimination, one class waxes fat and rich out of the labor and means of 
another. 

If, then, this amount does not go for revenue, but is for the most part a 
bounty paid to the manufacturer by every consumer of iron in all its man- 
ifold shapes and uses, how can an increase of the duties on iron as pro- 
posed by the bill now before thef House, be justified? On pig ii'on alone 
the duty is increased by this biU from six to nine dollars per ton ; on rail- 
road iron nearly in the same ratio, and on bar iron much more ; and still 
the iron masters clamor for more. Does their clamor proceed on the 
principle laid down by Dr. Wayland — ^PoHtical Economy, page 147 — that 
" when once a duty is imposed for the protection of a particular branch of 
manufactures, it is not long before home competition begins, ruin threatens, 
and a larger protective duty is demanded " ? Or is it because these iron 
cormorants, having tasted the sweets of inordinate gain, place no limit 
upon their insane greed? If I should fix the price of gold at 190 instead 
of IGO ; if I should add the recent 50 per cent, increase of the tariff to this 
protective bounty, or the increase proposed by the present bill ; I would 
be justified in fixing the average tax which the consumer pays to the 
manufacturer at over 200 per cent, on all kinds of iron ! Nor would our 
people then wonder, that whereas they once bought all articles into Avhich 
iron enters at small prices, these articles ai-e now enormously enhanced in 
price. Of course such articles as are increased in price by the increased 
value of the labor put on them, and into Avhicli little iron and more labor 
enters as an clement of cost, are double their old prices. A hatchet which, 
before the tariff of 1862 and the paper money system, cost twenty-five 



FINANCES, TAEIFFS, ETC. 41 

cents, now costs double. So with ploughs. A hoe that formerly cost but 
tliirty-seven and a half cents, now costs over a dollar. Articles into which 
less labor and more iron enters are greater stiU in the ratio of increase. 
A keg of nails which in 18G0 cost but $2.10, now brings over $7 ! Every 
article of iron, from a bodkin to a boiler, from an anvil to an engine, from 
a buckle to a buggy spring, from a hammer to a harrow-tooth, from a 
wood screw to a woman's hoop, from a steel shirt collar to an iron steam- 
ship, all pay their tribute to the iron-makers of the United States, and 
particularly of Pennsylvania, who, as the annexed table will show, man- 
ufacture nearly three-fourths of the iron of the United States : 

. Pig, Bar and other 

rolled. 

New Hampshire and Vermont 3,224 1, 170 

Massachusetts 13,100 20,285 

Maine .' 5,300 

Connecticut 11,000 2,060 

New Yorlc 63,145 38,275 

New Jersey 29,048 25,005 

Pennsylvania 553,560 259,209 

Maryland 30,500 7,000 

Ohio 94,647 10,439 

Indiana • 375 2,000 

Michigan 10,400 

Wisconsin 2,000 

Illinois 22,000 4,678 

Kentucky 23,362 6,200 

Virginia 9,096 17,870 

Tennessee 18,417 5,024 

North Carolina 1,007 

South Carolina 275 



884,474 405,798 



The duties imposed upon cotton manufactures by the tariff of 1862, 
are so involved and intricate that it is impossible to reduce them precisely 
to the ad valorem standard without the aid of the amount of duties actually 
received upon the amount of goods imported. That amount can be ascer- 
tained only from the Treasury Department of the United States. 

The duties on cotton goods seem to have been expressly devised to 
deceive and mislead the consumer, while giving a most exorbitant bounty 
to the home manufacturer. 

For instance, on certain classes of goods, specific duties, varying from 
one and three-quarters cents, according to the number of threads in the 
square inch, per yard, are imposed ; and on other classes, namely, colored 
prints, specific duties, varying from two and three-quarters to five and 
one-half cents, and an additional duty of ten per cent, ad valorem per yard 
are imposed. 

This complicated system of levying duties defies the intelligence of any 
man to unravel who is not engaged in the trade, or has not access to the 
custom-house returns at Washington. The present bill does not simplify 
but complicates still more this pernicious system of duties. 

Its obvious purpose is to deceive the consumer, and to give an unreason- 
able protection or bounty to the home manufacturer ; to tax and impoverish 



42 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

the consumers, and to build up an aristocracy of manufacturers, residing 
mostly in Massachusetts and the other New England States. 

But one ftict it cannot hide from plain people : that whereas three 
years ago our farmers' wives bought a yard of calico for ten or twelve 
cents, the same costs now fro>n twenty-five to twenty-eight cents. 

Mr. Mallory. More than that. Forty cents at least. 

Mr. Cox. Well, tliis I know, that whereas a yard of muslin, three 
years ago, cost ten cents, it now costs forty-five cents. What could be 
once bought with two and one-third days' labor, now requires nearly four. 
CoiFee, sugar, tea, and all the necessaries of life have not only been 
enhanced in their nominal price by the paper money standard, but really 
enhanced by the tariff also. But these taxes are patent to all. It being 
impossible to ascertain the precise duty imposed on cotton goods reduced 
to tlie ad valorem standard, it therefore can only be approximated. It 
probably ranges from 40 to 60 per cent. But to make a calculation on a 
basis most favorable to the manufacturer, I assume that the duties on 
cotton goods when reduced to the ad valorem standard would be 35 per 
cent., the ordinary ad valorem duty, when that form of duty is used, under 
the tariff of 18G2 and the bill before the House. Upon this basis the calcu- 
lations are made. 

In the preparation of these calculations I have taken unusual pains. 
I have been aided by a distinguished statist, Edmund Burke, of New 
Hampshire, to whom the country is indebted for many valuable lessons 
in economy. But if any one questions the accuracy of the data upon 
which they are based, I present some actual transactions which confii'm 
my conclusions. Below is the copy of a document showing the actual 
duties and charges paid at the Boston custom-house on a package of 
woollen goods and silk India-rubber fabrics imported from England and 
entered April 5, 1864. It is the account rendered to the importers by 
the brokers who transacted the business at the custom-house. The pack- 
age was marked B 77, and contained goods invoiced in Liverpool at £129 
2s. lOtZ. In reducing the sterling currency to Federal money, the invoice, 
for the sake of convenience, is called £130. 

Boston, April 5, 1864. 
Messrs. Barry & Bro. 

To Stone & Downer, Dr. 
Cfiarges at Liverpool as per margin. 

To duty on one package, per Africa $254 10 

Permit $ 10 

Bond - 30 

Custom-house charges. 62 

Cartage VS 

Wharfage 32 

Revenue stamp 1 15 

Commission 1 62 

4 86 

$258 96 

Premium on $250 80 at 80 per cent $1'70 55 

" " 3 30 at 80 " 2 64 

173 19 

$432 15 



FINANCES, TAKIFFS, ETC. 43 

Actual cost of importing the package above referred to, as estimated hy the importer: — 

Duty on B 77 $254 10 

Freight from Liverpool 22 60 

Marine Insurance 17 55 



$294 15 
Premium on gold and custom-house cliarges 178 05 

$492 20 

Amount of invoice in round numbers £130 00 

Duty and charges on specie basis in sterling, at $5 to the pound 90 00 

£220 00 



Reduced to Federal money at the rate of $8 50 to the pound 1,760 00 

110 00 

$ 1,870 00 

It will be seen that the pound sterling is estimated at $5 in Anaerican 
gold, which is higher than the actual rate of exchange, that being about 
$4.83 to the pound ; and therefore it is most favorable to the manufac- 
turer. 

Thus the package of goods which cost £130, or $650 in gold (calling 
the pound sterling $5), in England, actually cost $1,870 in the paper cur- 
rency of the United States, to import into this country, reckoning the dif- 
ference of exchange at 80 per cent, premium, as it was at the date of the 
transaction. Add to the cost in this country, at $1,870, the profits of the 
importer at 10 per cent., or $187, and the cost to the purchaser in our 
market is $2,057. At this point of tlieir cost the goods come in compe- 
tition with goods of the same kind produced by the home manufacturer. 
Thus he receives a protection or bounty on the same amount of goods 
($650) of $1,407, or 217 percent, ad valorem! 

On the same operation, calculated on a specie basis, the results will 
be as follows : cost in Liverpool £130 = $650. Duties and charges £90= 
$450. Total cost in this country, $1,100. Add $110 for theVofits of 
the importer — whole sum $1,210. Deduct first cost $650, and there re- 
mains $460 bounty to the home manufacturer on the same amount of 
goods, or 86 per cent, ad valorem ! This transaction shows that the 
actual protection given to the manufacturers of woollen and India-rubber 
goods by the tarifi" of 1862 is more than double the rates assumed in my 
calculation, under the heads of Woollen and India-Rubber Manufactures, 
which were 35 and 40 per cent, ad valorem. My demonstrations on that 
basis are sufliciently startling, although they fall far below the actual 
fact. 

This single transaction demonstrates beyond cavU the immense gains 
which the manufacturers are making by means of a protective tariff and 
a depreciated paper money system. Is it surprising that they grow rich? 
Will it be a matter of surprise if the people should grow poor and poorer 
under the operation of such a cunning system of injustice and robbery? 
The bandit baron who, in the middle ages, ravished his tribute money 



44 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

with mailed hand from the innocent wayfarer, or the navigator of the 
river which flowed past his castle, practised an honest system compared 
to the shrewd schemes of the present tariff system. 

Again, if it still be thought that my calculations are inaccurate, I fur- 
nish the House with another actual transaction. Messrs. Parker, Gan- 
nett & Osgood, large importers of seeds, «fec., in Boston, have furnished 
the following statement of the cost of importing an invoice of seeds : 

Cost of seeds in England £40, exchange $4 85 $194 00 

Cost of bags and casks 24 92 

Consul's fees, &c 5 83 

War risk, with insurance 12 00 

Portage V5 

Duties, 30 per cent., gold $6*7 50 

Premium on gold 46 24 

Permit 20 

Bond 40 

Stamps 80 

Freight 21 45 

186 59 

Exchange on sterling, £40 161 24 



$535 83 

Thus it costs in the depreciated currency of this country to import and 
land in Boston $535.33 on an invoice of seeds costing only £40 in En- 
gland, equal to $194 in the gold currency of the United States. Add 
the importer's profits at 10 per cent., $53.53, in the whole $588.88, and 
we have the cost in our market at wholesale prices, or 205 per cent, ad- 
vance on the first cost in England ! 

This transaction demonstrates that the profits of the home manufac- 
facturer, as I have calculated them, derived from the combined effects of 
a high tariff and a depreciated paper currency, are very far below the actual 
truth. Seeds do not come in competition with the home producer. 
Manufactured articles do compete with the home manufactm-er, and on 
those descriptions of goods imported, the duty is much higher than 30 
per cent. The statement above shows that under the present system the 
protection given to the home manufacturer cannot be less than 200 per 
cent., and in most instances a great deal more. The tables herein show 
that it is from 148 to 150 per cent ; but in most instances they omit 
freight, insurance, and other smaU charges ; and they are constructed on 
the basis of paper depreciated in the ratio of only $160 for $100 in 
gold. 

Another fact is to be remarked in connection with the statement above. 
The importation was a quantity of seeds for the benefit of the farmer and 
gardener. They are taxed a duty of 30 per cent, ad valorem^ payable in 
gold. In a table which I will hereafter insert, the House will see that 
all raw matei'ials, dye stuffs, &c., used in manufacturing, are taxed with 
very low duties, and some are admitted duty free, rags, for instance, and 
some 71,000,000 of pounds of wool nearly free. This is justified by the 
speech just made by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Morrill]. 
Thus the tariff' of 1862 discriminates in almost every particular in favor 
of the manufacturer and against the farmer. 



rmANCES, TARIFFS, ETC 



45 



How long will the class which I represent — the agricultural portion 
of the community, the class Avhich possesses in the aggregate three-fourths 
of the capital x)f the country, who produce the greatest share of its an- 
nual income, and who pay the greatest portion of its taxes — submit to be 
despoiled for the benefit of the manufacturing classes under the specious 
pretext that it is done to stimulate the industry of others, and is necessary 
for revenue to put down the rebellion and save the Union ? 



RECAPITULATION. 

I now propose to show the results of the preceding calculations in the 
condensed form of tables. 

Table I. 

Showing the cost of sundry articles imported from abroad at the place of importation ; 
the cost in our market at the point of competition with the home manufacture, includ- 
ing original cost ; diiFerence of exchange ; freight, on iron only ; duties, and import- 
ei-^s profits, and bounties on the same amount of goods to the home manufacturer in 
dollars; and rates percent., reckoned upon the basis of the standard gold currency of 
the United States : 





Cost at Place of 
Importation. 


Cost in our mar- 
ket, including 
exchange, &c. 


Bounty to home manufac- 
turers. 




In dollars. 


Rate per 
cent. 


Iron, pig, 

" railroad, 

" bar, 

Cotton, manufacture of, . . 
"Woollen, manufacture of, . . 
Paper, manufacture of, . . 
Leather, manufactm-e of (tan'd) 
Clothing, manufactured, . . 
Boots and shoes, .... 
Soap and caudles, .... 
India-rubber goods, .... 


$542,952 

1,858,979 

3,356,300 

24,647,648 

27,750,371 

509,542 

2,437,592 

1,401,057 

69,447 

108,953 

282,687 


$1,167,668 

3,619,287 

6,120,108 

3^,041,867 

43,956,386 

811,5i2 

3,727,825 

2,219,273 

110,003 

172,579 

447,761 


$624,710 

1,760,303 

2,772,808 

14,394,219 

16,206,215 

301,970 

1,289,485 

818,216 

40,556 

63,626 

165,074 


115 
94 

80 
58 
58 
59 
53 
58 
58 
58 
58 




$64,965,528 


$101,394,069 


$38,437,182 





These articles are selected because they come in competition with the 
largest classes of American manufactures. This and the following tables 
are reconstructed upon the basis of the importations of 18G1, the census 
returns of 1860, and the rates of duty imposed by the tariff of 1862, 
reduced as nearly as they may be to the ad valorem standard. I have not 
included the fifty per cent, additional upon previous rates imposed by 
the recent joint resolution ; nor the additional tariff of the present bill. 



46 



EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGKESS. 



Table II. 

Showing the cost of sundry articles imported from abroad at the place of importation ; 
the cost in our market at the point of competition with the home manufacturer, in 
eluding original cost; difference of exchange; freight, on iron only ; duties, and import 
cr's profits, and bounties on the same amount of goods to the home manufacturer in 
dollars, and rates per cent., reckoned on the basis of the paper currency of the United 
States, depreciated at the rate of only $160 in paper to $100 in gold . 



Iron, pig, 

" railroad, .... 

" bar, 

Cotton, manufacture of, . 
Woollen, manufacture of, . 
Paper, manufacture of. 
Leather, manufacture of (tan'd) 
Clothing, manufactured . . 
Boots and shoes, . . . 
Soap and candles, .... 
India-rubber goods, . . . 



^ . . , „ Cost in our mar- 
Cost at place of ket, including 
importation, e^^ijange, &c. 



$542,952 

1,858,929 

3,356,300 

24,647,648 

27,750,371 

509,542 

2,437,592 

1,401,057 

69,447 

108,953 

282,687 



$64,965,528 



Bounty to home manufac- 
turers. 



$1,685,301 

5,385,773 

9,303,858 

61,274,040 

68,987,420 

1,266,720 

5,845,785 

3,482,651 

172,632 

270,856 

702,758 



In dollars. 



Eate per 
cent. 



$142,349 

3,526,794 

5,947,558 

36,226,412 

41,237,0491 

757,178 

3,408,193 

2,081,594; 

103,185 

161,704 

419,871' 



210 
190 
170 
148 
148 
148 
140 
148 
149 
150 
148 



$158,377,794 $95,411,887i 



Table III. 

Showing the value of sundry manufactures produced in the United States in 1860, the 
bounties received by the home manufacturer under the tariff of 1863, in rates per cent, 
and in dollars, and the aggregate of original value and bounties, reckoned according 
to the standard gold currency of the United States . 





Value. 


Bounty. 


Afrgregate 

Value and 

Bounty. 


AUTICLEB. 


Eate per 
cent. 


In dollars. 


Iron, pig, ........ 

" bar and rolled,'^ . . . 
Cotton, manufacture of, . . 
"Woollen, manufacture of, . . 
Paper, manufacture of, . . . 
Leather (tanned), .... 

Clothing, manufactured, . . 
Boots and shoes, .... 

Soap and candles, . . . . 

India-rubber goods, . . . 


$19,500,000 
22,000,000 

115,000,000 
69,000,000 
17,500,000 
72,000,000 
70,000,000 
90,000,000 
17,000,000 
5,729,900 


115 

87 
58 
58 
59 
53 
58 
58 
58 
58 


$22,425,000 
19,140,000 
66,700,000 
40,020,000 
10,325,000 
38,160,000 
40,600,000 
62,200,000 
9,860,000 
3,323,342 


$41,925,000 

41,140,000 

181,700,000 

109,020,000 

27,825,000 

110,160,000 

110,600,000 

142,200,000 

26,860,000 

9,053,242 




$497,729,900 




$302,753,342'$800,483,242 



* Average duty on iron — 



Rolled, 94 
Bar, 80 



2)174 

87 per cent. 



FINANCES, TARIFFS, ETC. 



47 



Table IV. 

Showing the value of sundry manufactures produced in the United States in 18G0, the 
bounties received by the home manufacturer under the tariff of 18G2, in rates per cent, 
and in dollars, and the aggregate of original value and bounties reckoned according 
to the paper currency of the United States, depreciated only in the ratio of $160 in 
paper to $100 in gold. 





Paper basis. 


Bounty. 


Aggregate 




Per cent. 


In dollars. 


\ alue and 
Bounty. 


Iron, pig, 

" bar and rolled,* . . 
Cotton, manufacture of, 
Woollen, manufacture of, . 
Paper, manufacture of, . 
Leather (tanned), . . . 
Clothing mauufactured, 
Boots and shoes, . . . 
Soap and candles, . . . 
India-rubber goods, . . . 


$19,500,000 
22,000,000 

115,000,000 
09,000,000 
17,500,000 
72,000,000 
70,000,000 
90,000,000 
17,000,000 
5,729,900 


210 
180 
148 
148 
148 
140 
148 
149 
150 
148 


$40,950,000 

89,000,000 

169.200,000 

102,120,000 

25,900,000 

100,800,000 

103,600,000 

134,100,000 

25,500,000 

8,480,252 


$00,450,000 

61,600,000 

284,200,000 

171,120,000 

43,400,000 

172,800,000 

173,600,000 

224,100,000 

42,500,000 

14,210,152 




^^497,729,900 




$750,250,252 


$1,247,620,152 



Estimated according to the standard gold currency of the United States, 
on an aggregate value of ^497,729,900 of manufactured goods of the de- 
scription stated in the foregoing tables, the home manufacturers, by rea- 
son of the difference in exchange, duties, and other expenses of importa- 
tion of foreign articles of the same kind, together with the importer's 
profits, derive, through the agency of the system of protection established 
by the tariff of 18G2, an aggregate bounty of $302,753,342. 

The tariff and the other expenses of importation enable the home 
manufacturers to charge and levy upon the people of the United States 
that enormous sum every year in gold ; supposing the manufactures of the 
country to be the same in amount as in 1800, and the tariff the same as 
that of 1862. 

If the rates are more, as this bill proposes to make them more, the 
sum will be greater ; if less, it will be less accordingly. 

The population of the United States in 1860 was 31,445,080 souls. 
Consequently the proportion per head of this enormous bounty exacted by 
the manufacturers in gold is $9.62. 

Estimated upon the basis of the irredeemable paper currency of the 
United States, depreciated only in the ratio of $160 in paper to $100 in 
gold, the aggregate bounty levied by the home manufacturers on the peo- 
ple of the United States on the same amount of domestic manufactures, 
namely, $497,729,900, is $750,250,252, or $23.88 per head. 
^^When, therefore, I propose to amend this bill so as to have these du- 

* Average duty ^n iron — 

Railroad, 190 
Bar, 170 

2)360 

180 per cent. 



48 EIGHT YEAES EST COITOEESS. 

ties payable iu the paper currency like other public dues, i. intend, with 
full knowledge of its effect, to strike off at least $14.26 per head from 
the burdens which labor pays from its hard earnings to protect and pam- 
per the " splendid paupers" who are thus living upon the boimty of others. 
I intend to save from the grasp of the miUiqnnaire and manufacturer, 
for the benefit of the poor man and consumer, the sum of $447,496,910 
on the rates of the tariff of 1862. If the people must pay bounty to the 
capitalist, is it not enough to pay it in the ordinary paper currency by 
which we are measuring other values ? Is it not enough to pay a bounty 
in paper equal to the sum of $302,753,342 now levied in gold upon the 
.articles enumerated ?_^ Think of it ! For the iron which we use in all its 
varieties of adaptation ; for the cotton we wear, whether printed or plain, 
in the caHco dress or the shirting ; for the wool in blanket, carpet, or 
clothing ; for the newspaper, book, and pamphlet ; for the leather we use 
when tanned or manufactured into boots and shoes ; for the clothing we 
buy already made up ; for the soap and candles and India-rubber goods ; 
for these only, imdcr our tariff of 1862, and not counting our recent in- 
crease or the proposed increase of this bill, we pay as gratuity to one 

^'xclass of persons the enormous sum of $750,250,252. 

Y^ Will any one pretend that all this is for revenue ? What ! when the 

' tariff does not raise one-tenth of that sum on all articles of importation ! 

• What, then, is this $750,250,252 paid W? Not for war, not for debts, 
not for expenses. Is it possible that we have to pay on some ten articles 
only, in paper money, $750,000,000 to get less than $50,000,000 of 
revenue from them?/ Mr. Hays, comptroller of Chicago, with keen 
analysis, once" showed that, by the tariff acts of 1846 and 1857, the 
people paid the startling sum of $338,000,000 to afford the Federal Govern- 
ment a revenue of $54,000,000 ; and he prophesied that by the tariff of 
1862 the loss to the community would be still greater. How much 
greater is apparent from my calculations on the depreciated paper system 
and the increased duties of 1862 ! 

" What, theh, do you propose? To abolish all tariffs?" Yes. God 
save the people from these indirect and insidious robberies ! In their 

! name let such tariffs be abolished. Since you have begun on internal 
taxation, let all our revenues be thus levied. If you abolish the tariff 
of 1862, then,' to pay the other taxes, you give to the people an increased 
ability to the amount of $750,250,252 on the few articles alone which I 
enumerated ; and how much more on all manufactured articles ! Abolish 
your tariffs, and if your direct taxes are unfair they are not unfelt, and 
can be speedily corrected. Abolish your tariffs, and let every interest 
stand undisguised before the law ; the farmer the equal of the manufac- 
turer ; the laboring man the equal of the millionnaire. No mask of indus- 
try over the features of capital ; no unjust discriminations ; no despoiling 
one class of labor under the pretence of stimulating another ; no unhealthy 
drugging of any one business by the robbery of another. 

But instead of mitigating, you propose to aggravate these oppressions. 
By your joint resolution the other day you have added to these onerous 
rates of 1862 fifty per cent. more. If this is not to be continued after the 
1st of July, we arc at least to pay a large increase by the present bill. 
We are expected, Ave of the West, to pay our share of it — as I shall show, 



FINANCES, TAEITFS, ETC. 49 

the larger share — without murmur ; because the war, instigated by the 
section which reaps most of these gigantic sums from our toil and sweat, 
demands our support ! 

Very well. For over two years we have submitted. But if we are 
to keep on patiently in submission, a few years will see all our resources 
sucked from us by these vampires of the East. If taxes must be raised for 
war or for debts, to pay for the peculations of scoundrels or for the patriotic 
service of soldiei's, let them be levied directly, fairly, justly, that all may 
feel their operation, and the burdens, sufficiently great for a whole people, 
may not be borne by a part, and that part which is the least able to bear 
them. 

The people are the victims of the joint robbery of a system of bounties 
under the guise of duties, and of an inconvertible and depreciated paper 
currency under the guise of money. Is it a cause of wonder that the 
manufacturers accumulate wealth so rapidly, that they grow rich within a 
year if they were poor before ? This system is rapidly building up an 
aristocracy, composed of manufacturers and gamblers in irredeemable 
paper money. In the same proportion it is impoverishing the masses of 
the people. It is rapidly reducing them to the same level of destitution 
and degradation as that of the people of Europe. Only here it is worse, 
for here it is in combination with a depreciated paper-money system, which 
the aristocrats of Europe do not tolei'ate. This combination is rushing 
the American people along with headlong speed to inevitable ruin. In 
the name of the laboring people of my district and State, in behalf of those 
the results of whose toil are thus torn from their families to pamper wealth 
and ari'ogance, I protest against this system of oppression. In behalf of 
the poor men who work from day to day in shop and field, from whose 
labor at last all these millions are wrung ;• in behalf of those who cannot 
and do not combine to subsidize the press, fee lawyers, importune Con- 
gress ; who cannot afford to take their little all from their families to pay 
sharp men for keen devices to " cheat by statute ; " in their behalf I do 
challenge the honesty and justice of these measures. 

Mr. Chairman, no man is now so wise and gifted that he can save tliis 
nation from bankruptcy. I believe the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. 
Morrill] himself expressed his belief in our ultimate ruin. 

Mr. Morrill. I ask the gentleman to yield to me to correct his 
remark, I made no prophecy on the subject. 

Mr. Cox. I am glad to be put right. I so understood him. 

No borrowing system can save us. The scheme of making green- 
backs a legal tender, which enabled the debtor to cheat his creditor, 
thereby playing the old game of kingcraft, to debase the currency in order 
to aid the designs of despotism, may float us for a while amidst the 
fluctuations and bubbles of the day ; but as no one possesses the power to 
repeal the law of the Almighty, which decrees (and as our Constitution 
has established) that gold and silver shall be the standard of value in the 
world, so they will ever thus remain, notwithstanding the legislation of 
Congress. Congress may make paper the measure of prices, but it can 
never make paper the standard of value. Such a paper system in con- 
nection with this tariff will, sooner or later, crush labor in this country. 
What then ? When our laboi'ing masses shall have become sufficiently 
4 



50 EIGHT YEAKS EST CONGRESS. 

impoverished by this system, will not the transition from a republic to a 
despotism be easy? Will not that phenomenon of tyranny, the armed 
soldier accompanying the tax-gatherer, occur here ? Does not the ques- 
tion of taxation, therefore, involve the problem of liberty? Does not 
this system, against which in its every stage I have protested, involve an 
enormous wickedness against the interests and happiness of mankind ? 

The present tariff system has been devised for the benefit of the 
manufacturer, at the expense of the people, and yet it does not really aid 
the Treasury. If it makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, then, by 
this concentration of wealth in a few, the less is the proportion of it which 
will be paid into the Treasury. Sismoudi, page 79, says that all returns 
show that the great amount of revenue is not paid by the rich, or even by 
the middle classes, but by the poor and those just above them. He holds 
that all attempts at taxation of luxuries have failed in productiveness. 
The state of the revenue depends mainly on the power of the poor to 
purchase the necessaries and comforts of life. Hence, any system like 
this, which aggrandizes wealth in a few, destroys the great resources of 
revenue upon which we are to depend at last for our credit and our 
safety. 

Again, as many of the duties are prohibitory, no revenue Is derived 
from them, and the Treasury again loses. Under such duties, paper, boots 
and shoes, soap and candles. India-rubber fabrics, in fact nearly all the 
articles named in the foregoing tables, enjoy a monopoly in our market, 
while in many instances the tariff of 1862 permits certain articles used 
by the manufacturers to be imported either free or at nominal duties. For 
instance, rags free ; India rubber, raw, 10 per cent. ; lasting for ladies' 
boots and shoes and for soles, 10 per cent. In 1860, $904,852 worth of 
paper rags were imported duty free. These rags -vyent into manufactured 
paper, and upon that amount of stock, duty free, the paper makers Avere 
permitted to charge their enormous profits. And so with regard to other 
articles admitted with slight duty for the benefit of the manufacturer. 

When the manufacturer produces an ample supply of goods for the 
home market, and has a large surplus for which he is compelled to seek a 
market abroad, it is just to exempt the raw material which he uses from 
duty, because he again carries it out of the country in the shape of manu- 
factured goods. In that case, it operates so far as a di-awback. Such is 
the policy of Great Britain. But when the manufacturer has the sub- 
stantial control of the home market, through the agency of prohibitory 
duties, there can be no greater iniquity practised on the people than to 
permit him to tax his enormous profit upon the very article which the 
Government admits duty free, or nearly so. Is it not legalized robbery, 
more detestable in its enormity than the actual crime ? Yet the party in 
power have inaugurated a tariff system which authorizes and sanctions 
this very iniquity. 

The estimates from which I draw these conclusions cannot be precisely 
accurate. It is not assumed that they arc. It is only claimed that they 
are an approximation to the truth. The most important element of error 
is the basis of the value of home manufactui'cs in the census tables of 
1860, whether the actual cost or the price by wholesale in market. There- 
fore, in order to state the case in the most favorable form for the home 



rmANCES, TAEIPFS, ETC. 



51 



manufacturer, I Avill assume that upon the basis of the depreciated paper 
currency of the United States, their profits or bounties are at the rate of 
100 per cent., or in the aggregate $497,729,900, or $15.83 per head of 
the population of the United States. 

To recapitulate. Rate of profit or bounty, reckoned upon the specie 
standard: $497,729,900, it is $302,753,342 bounty, or $9.62 per head. 
Paper standard : $497,729,900, it is $750,250,252 bounty, or $23.88 per 
head. Bounty at rate of 100 per cent.: $497,729,900, it is $497,729,900 
bounty, or $15.83 per head. 

It will be observed that the first estimate I make upon the present 
tiiriff is on a specie basis. On this basis, the taxation, or tribute to the 
manufacturer, is at the rate of $9.62 per head. My second estimate is 
made upon the same tariff and a paper-money basis depreciated in the 
ratio of $160 to $100. On this basis, the taxation or tribute is $23.88 
per head. My third estimate is upon the basis of allowing the manufac- 
turer to receive a tribute of 100 per cent. On this basis the taxation or 
tribute is $15.83 per head. These estimates are embodied in the three 
following tables, from which it will appear how the tribute is levied upon 
the various States : 

Table 1 {Specie basis). 

States. Population. Per head. Tribute. 

Indiana 1,350,428 $9 62 $12,991, 117 

Illinois 1,711,951 9 62 16,468,968 

Iowa 674,913 9 62 6,492,663 

Kentucky 1,155,684 9 62 11,117,680 

Kansas 107,206 9 62 1,031,321 

Michigan 749,113 9 62 7,206,467 

Minnesota 172,123 9 62 1,655,832 

Missouri 1,182,012 9 62 11,370,955 

Nebraska 28,841 9 62 277,350 

Ohio 2,339,511 9 62 22,506,095 

Wisconsm 775,881 9 62 7,463,975 

Aggregate 10,247,663 $9 62 $99,582,415 



Tabli£ 2 (Paper basis). 

States. Population. 

Indiana 1,350,428 

Illinois 1,711,951 

Iowa 674,913 

Kentucky 1,155,684 

Kansas 107,206 

Michigan 749,113 

Minnesota 172,123 

Missouri ". . 1,182,012 

Nebraska 28,841 

Ohio 2,339,411 

Wisconsin 775,881 

Aggregate 10,247,663 



Per head. 


Tribute. 


$23 88 


$32,248,220 


23 88 


40,880,928 


23 88 


16,116,923 


23 88 


27,597,734 


23 88 


2,560,079 


23 88 


17,888,818 


23 88 


4,110,297 


23 88 


28,226,446 


23 88 


688,623 


23 88 


55,867,522 


23 88 


18,528,038 


$23 88 


$244,713,278 



62 • EIGHT YEAES IN C0NGKE8S. 

Table 3 {Bounty 100 /ler cent). 

States. Population. Per head. Tribute. 

Indiana 1,350,428 $15 83 $21,37'7,2'75 

Illinois 1,711,951 15 83 27,100,184 

Iowa 674,913 15 83 10,683,872 

Kentucky*.".'. 1,155,684 15 83 18,294,477 

Kansas 107,206 15 83 1,697,321 

Miclii"-an 749,113 15 83 11,858,458 

Minnesota 172,123 15 83 1,697,070 

Missouri 1,182,012 15 83 18,711,250 

Nebraslia 28,841 15 83 456,553 

Ohio 2,339,510 15 83 37,034,459 

Wisconsin 775,881 15 83 11,282,196 



Ajri^regate 10,247,663 $15 83 $160,193,115 



Thus, it appears from the preceding tables that the tribute which the 
eleven western States pay to the manufacture of the country, residing 
mainly in the eastern States, in consequence of the falsely called protec- 
tive system and paper-money system of this country, is, as reckoned 

On the specie basis $99,582,414, or $9 62 per head. 

" paper basis 244,713,728, or 23 88 " 

" basis of 100 per cent 160,193,151, or 15 83 " 

Whole consumption of the articles of manufacture named in the 
preceding tables three and four, including cost and tribute or bounty, is 
as follows : 

On the specie basis $25 45 per head. 

" paper basis 39 71 " 

" basis of 100 per cent 3166 " 

On reflection, every intelligent man will perceive that, allowing the 
manufacturers at the rate of 100 per cent, profit on the various fabrics 
and goods enumerated in the preceding tables, $31.66 per head is not a 
large consumption to the people of the United States. The preceding 
tables and calculations develop the most astounding results. They show 
that a tariff system under the pretext of raising revenue for the use of 
the Government of the United States has, in this period of war when 
every dollar is needed, been so devised as to give the most extraordinary 
and unreasonable bounty to the manufacturing classes, in the case of 
many articles, virtually prohibiting the introduction of the competing ar- 
ticle into the country. 

PROTECTED AND NON-PROTECTED STATES. 

From the facts which we have presented, and the tables showing the 
leading productions of the western States, it Avill be perceived that the 
States of the Union may be divided into two great classes — the protected 
States and the unprotected States. We speak in regard to their indus- 
trial interests. 

The manufacturing States, mainly the New England States and Penn- 
sylvania, are the protected States. The agricultural States are the un- 
protected States. 



FESTANCES, TAitlFFS, ETC. 53 

States that produce a commodity in such abundance as to furnish an 
ample supply for home consumption and a large surplus for markets abroad 
can derive no benefit from protective duties. 

Our Government might impose a duty on wheat and flour Avhich would 
be absolutely prohibitory, and it would not increase the prices of those 
articles in Chicago or New York. Thus the agricultural States derive 
no protection from the duties imposed by the present tariff on articles pro- 
duced by agricultural industry. The men who devised the present tariflf 
knew that a duty on corn, wheat, tobacco, or cotton, was of no possible 
benefit to the producers of those articles. They were only tubs thi'own 
to the whale, put in the tariff for the purpose of deluding the ignorant and 
imreflecting with the mere pretence of justice. 

Mr. MoEEiLL. I would like to ask the gentleman if he did not vote 
here the other day against the termination of the reciprocity treaty, the 
termination of which would admit all the agricultural products of Canada 
free of duty, and if it is possible to levy duties upon those agricultural 
products without a termination of the treaty ? 

JNIr. Cox. I do not precisely remember how I did vote upon it, but I 
know how I ought to have voted. The question got a little complicated. 
I am for allowing the largest liberty of interchange possible. I never 
was afraid of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest 
market I could find. That is my doctrine, which I learned from a distin- 
guished citizen of New England. I have never departed from that doc- 
trine, and therefore I am in favor of the largest reciprocity treaty ; be- 
lieving that the larger it is the better it is for the mass of our people. 

Mr. MoKRiLL. How does the gentleman propose to remedy the matter 
by having a treaty of perfect reciprocity and a system of tariff duties at 
the same time? 

Mr. Cox. I propose to extend it to all other articles as soon as I can 
reach them, and to abolish all indirect and insidious taxation in the shape 
of tariffs. 

When interrupted I was showing that the tendency of the present 
tariff system, and in fact of all tariffs, revenue or protective, more or 
less is to drain wealth from the unprotected States and accumulate it in 
the protected States. 

It can now be understood why New England accumulates wealtli so 
much more rapidly than the western States. I know it is arrogantly said, 
" New England has more intelligence, thrift, invention, and industry." I 
need not deny that, and yet I can account for her immense gains on 
another principle. 

The interests of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, are all 
subjects of protection or bounty directly from the General Government. 
"VVe have shown how her leading manufacturing interests are protected. 
Her fishing interests are also encouraged by a direct bounty from the 
Treasury of the United States ; a half million, I believe it is, being yearly 
paid to the fishermen of Massachusetts as a mere bounty, a gratuity with- 
out consideration. We in the West ask and get no bounty for the white 
fish of our lakes or the cat fish of our rivers. 

We refer more particularly to Massachusetts, for the reason that to her i 
agency more than to any other is to be attributed the civil war which now 



54: EIGHT TEAHS IN CONGRESS. 

devastates our country and threatens the destruction of its civil institutions 
and of republican liberty. That State has been the unceasing and un- 
principled agitator, the fomenter of discord between the sections, the dis- 
seminator of fanatical and dogmatical opinion, and the assailant of the 
constitutional rights of other States ; and has thus done more than all 
other States to bring our present calamities upon us. It is meet, there- 
fore, that we should consider how much she has been benefited by the 
Union whose very existence she has put to such fearful hazard. 

It is proper also, in this connection, to remark that while Massachu- 
setts has been most benefited during the present war by the agency of the 
combined tariff and paper-money system, she has done the least to support 
the war. Under the various calls for troops up to March ] , 1864, Massa- 
chusetts has been reported deficient 20,592 men, a much larger number in 
proportion to her population than any other State ; and in order to fill 
her quotas, instead of sending her own meddlesome and mischievous 
citizens into the field, and exposing their precious persons to the hazards 
of camp and battle, she has ransacked almost every State in the Union, 
and even Canada and Europe, for men, filling her regiments with worthless 
substitutes and negroes. ( She is coining money out of the precious blood 
of the land and the enormous waste of wealth in this terrible war, while 
she takes care that her own blood shall be preserved. She is the most 
arro"-ant and mischievous State, the most selfish and timid in the war 
which her mischievous propensities have provoked, and she has the least 
title of any of the States of the Union to the favors of the Government. 

Mr. Dawes. It is not only an old story, but it had its origin and was 
nursed into growth by the men who are now arrayed as rebels against the 
Union ; and my friend from Ohio is but repeating their old and stale 
charges, ground into impalpable powder by the truth long ago. 

Mr. Cox. I have heard the gentleman say that once before. I learned 
my principles not from any one in the South, but from Dr. Wayland, 
known in New England and throughout the country as a good and great 
man ; and it would not invalidate his doctrines if Davis and Toombs 
should repeat them from morning till niglit and from year to -year. It 
would not prove the truth or falsity of his principles. If JeiFerson Davis 
should teU the gentleman that two and two make four, he would deny it. 
"When Davis says that two and two make five, I deny it. Because a man 
now in rebellion, when once here, stated the truths and facts in economy, 
which I believe, while I disbelieve in secession, it does not militate against 
these economic truths that he believes in secession. It is not relevant to 
the argument for the gentleman to bring the heresies of secession here to 
disprove the injustice of the protective system on tarifts. I know many 
abolitionists — among them Wendell Phillips — who are free-trade men. 
Does it follow, therefore, that Wendell Phillips is a disuniouist ? I know 
he is a disunionist ; but for another reason, and not for that. 

Mr. Dawes. I am not troubling the gentleman with the inquiry as to 
where he learned his principles. That is a thing I have not the least 
concern about. What I said was tliat his charges against New England 
were an old story, first taught by the men who plotted and are now carry- 
ing on the rebellion, and the gentleman is but repeating them here. 
Where he got his principles will be a matter of the least concern to us of 



FmANCES, TARIFFS, ETC. 55 

New England, who have no disposition to follow them out or adopt them. 
The charges which he brings against New England to-day can be found, 
in hcec verba, in the speeches of southern nuUifiers from John Calhoun 
clear down to the last of them who took his leave of us in this House in 
the Congress before the present. 

Mr. Cox. That will do. 

Mr. Daaves. That is all I want. 

Mr. Cox. Because John C. Calhoun and such men disfavored the idea 
of bounties to manufacturers, and also favor that of secession, therefore any 
opposition to bounties is a fallacy like secession ! According to that reason- 
ing, Adam Smith was a secessionist ; and the great body of eminent men 
Avho have been true economists — Sismondi, McCulloch, Cobden, and in- 
cluding even the venerable Dr. Wayland — who have laid down the doc- 
trine which I have to-day advanced, must all be, regardless of the foolish 
anachronism, secessionists ! Such is the result of the sapient argumenta- 
tion of the gentleman from Massachusetts. Daniel "Webster himself advo- 
cated free trade once for New England, and John C. Calhoon advocated 
protection. As Webster was for free trade, he was a secessionist, I sup- 
pose ! The principles which I have applied to the facts stated do not de- 
pend upon who have announced them, but upon their truth. If those men 
in rebellion have argued in favor of truth on one subject, am I to give it up ? 
If the devil should tell the truth, am I to deny it? The gentleman him- 
self may ; but he yields to the devil when he does it. I do not ; therefore 
I do not yield to the gentleman. Neither is it true that I have copied in 
this argument the speeches of southern nullifiers in hw.c verba. No argu- 
ment on the tariff has ever been made on the basis of the census of 1860, 
and in connection Avith and in relation to our paper-money system. I 
venture to say that these views are as new as they are true. 

The Chairman (Mr. Schenck). The hour of the gentleman from 
Ohio has expired. 

Mr. Mallory. I hope the gentleman will be allov/ed to conclude. 

Unanimous consent being given, 

Mr. Cox proceeded, as follows : 

It may not be gratifying to the gentleman, but I propose to prove aU 
I said, and shall exhibit, without fear of the charge of secession, the in- 
terests of Massachusetts which enjoy the protective bounties of the Federal 
Government at the expense of the people of other portions of the Union. 

Capital invested and production of Massachusetts in the following 

manufactures in 1860 : 

Capital Invested. Production, 

Cotton* $33,300,000 $36,745,864 

Woollen 10,179,500 12,781,514 

Leatherf 10,540,056 

Boots and shoes 11,169,277 46,440,209 

Fisheriesf 9,300,542 

$54,648,777 $115,662,185 

In all manufactures 133,000,000 266,000,000 

* Cotton manufactured in New Hampshire, 

owned mainly in Massachusetts, should be 

added 13,780,000 16,661,531 

\ Capital not given in the census table. 



56 



EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 



In the above exhibit the House can see what immense interests Massa- 
chusetts possesses which enjoy protection and bounty, and why it is her 
Representatives are so sensitive when we of other States undertake to call 
her to account for her unrighteous gains. By applying the principle of 
calculation herein before applied to the manufacturing interests of the 
Avhole country, it can be ascertained how much in dollars and cents 
Massachusetts unjustly abstracts in the form of protective bounties from 
the people of the Union. Nor, in view of this exhibit, can any one be 
surprised that Massachusetts, located in a rigorous climate and possessed 
of a sterile soil, should accumulate wealth more rapidly than any other 
State. 

We close our view of the operations of the tariff and paper-money sys- 
tem by appending sundry tables showing some of the leading unprotected 
products, contrasting the New England and western States. Perhaps 
my friend from Massachusetts may think before I am done, that the census 
was taken in Massachusetts by secessionists. 

Unprotected Products. 

Lumber. 

New England States $12,099,895 

Western States 33,274,792 



Cattle. 



Ne^o England States. Head. 

Maine 377,067 

New Hampshire 264,467 

Massachusetts 279,914 

Vermont 364,917 

Khode Island 39, 105 

Connecticut 241,907 



1,567,377 



In New England States 

Balance in favor of western States 



Western States. 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Missouri 

Ohio 

Wisconsin 



Head. 

1,505,581 

1,170,005 

536,254 

87,859 

836,059 

534,267 

119,006 

1,168,984 

1,659,830 

512,866 

8,130,711 

1,567,377 

6,563,334 



Here Mr. Cox gave the same details as to these States on other arti- 
cles, of which the following is a 



RECAPITULATION. 



New England States. 

Lumber, value $12,099,895 

Cattle, head 1,567,377 

Swine, number 322,697 

Slaughtered animals, value^lf), 927,442 

Wheat, bushels 1,456,011 

Indian corn, bushels 7,564,551 

Butter, pounds 51,180,083 

Cheese, pounds 21,479,396 



Western States. 

Lumber, value $33,274,793 

Cattle, head 8,130,711 

Swine, number 13,498,328 

Slauglitered anunals, value. $73,663,587 

Wheat, bushels 100,656,545 

Indian corn, bushels 462,012,098 

Butter, pounds 164,991,279 

Cheese, pounds 30,615,403 



FESTANOES, TARIFFS, ETC. 

Balance in favor of Western States. 

Lumber, value $21,204,898 

Cattle, head 6,563,334 

Swine, number 13, 1*75,631 

Slaughtered animals, value $57,736, 145 

Wheat, bushels 99,200,534 

Indian corn, bushels 454,447,547 

Butter, pounds 113,811,196 

Cheese, pounds 9,136,107 

Classification of Slates and Territories according to the Census of 1860. 



57 



N. England States. 


Middle States. 


Western States. 


Southern States. 


Pacific Stales. 


Maine, 


New York, 


Ohio, 


Virginia, 


New Mexico, 


New Hampshire, 


Pennsylvania, 


Indiana, 


North Carolina, 


Utah, 


Vermont, 


New Jersey, 


Michigan, 


South Carolina, 


California, 


Massachusetts, 


Delaware, 


Illinois, 


Georgia, 


Oregon. 


Rhode Island, 


Maryland, 


Wisconsin, 


Florida, 




Connecticut. 


Dist. Columbia. 


Minnesota, 

Iowa, 

Missouri, 

Kentucky, 

Kansas, 


Alabama, 

Louisiana, 

Texas, 

Mississippi, 

Arkansas, 








Nebraska. 


Tennessee. 





Value of Cotton manufactured in 1860. 

New England States $80,301,585 

Middle States 26,272,111 

Southern States 7,172,293 

Western States 1,391,987 

Aggregate $115,137,926 

Massachusetts $36,735,864 

New Hampshire (owned chiefly in Massachusetts) 16,661,531 

$53,397,395 



In consequence of the diminislied supply of cotton, this branch of 
manufacture has considerably fallen off, but to what extent I have not the 
means of calculating. 

Value of Woollen manfacturcs in 1860. 

New England States $38,509,080 

Middle States 24,100,488 

Southern States 2,303,303 

Western States 3,718,092 

Aggregate $68,630,963 

In Massachusetts $18,930,000 



Since 1860, stimulated by the diminished supply of cotton goods, the 
woollen manufactures of the country have been more than doubled. In 



58 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

relation to the increase of the woollen manufacture in the United States, 
the Boston Shipping List, under date of December 11, 1863, thus re- 
marks : 

" We have lately called attention to the rapid increase of woollen machinery, and the 
questionable policy of introducing woollen machinery into cotton mills now idle. The rush 
for woollens for some time past is starting up new mills in all directions. It is estimated 
that there has been added within the past eighteen months about 1,000 sets, an increase 
of 40 per cent., and manufacturers of machinery are full of contracts for several months 
in advance. The above does not include the woollen machinery in operation in Pennsyl- 
vania and other parts of the United States, which was not less than 1,000 sets eighteen 
months since, and the increase has doubtless been quite equal to the increase in the New 
England States. The product of all the machinery is estimated at from $135,000,000 to 
$150,000,000 worth of goods per annum." 

Value of Boots and Shoes made in 1860. 

New England States $54,'76V,0'7T 

Middle States 22,588,291 

Southern States 2,729,327 

. Western States 9,465,205 

Aggregate $89,549,900 

In Massachusetts $46,440,762 

Value of Leather manufactured in 18G0. 

New England States $16,333,871 

Middle States .' 36,344,548 

Southern States 4,074,496 

Western States 5,980,457 

Pacific States 351,469 

Aggregate $63,084,751 

In Massachusetts $10,354,056 

Value of manufactured Clothing in 1860. 

Whole amount $64,002,975 

For product of each State see Preliminary Report of Census for 1860, page 175. 

Value of paper manufactured in 1860. 

Amount $17,500,000 

Census Report, page 191. 

Value of Soap and Candles manufactured in 1860. 

Amount $7,000,000 

Census Report, page 191. 

Value of India-rubber Goods made in 1860. 

Amount $5,729,900 

Census Report, page 185. 



FESTAJiCES, TARIFFS, ETC. 59 

Discriminations in favor of the Manufacturer. 

Articles used in manufacturing, with dxity au]icxed, under the Tariff of 18G2 : 

liafe of Duty. 

Cowhides, raw 10 per cent. 

Emeralds 5 " 

Diamonds 5 " 

Goat-skins, raw 10 " 

Dyewood, extract of 10 " 

Gems 5 " 

Hatter's fur, cleaned 15 " 

Lastings for shoes, &c 10 " 

Sumach 10 " 

Hare skins, undressed 10 " 

Hides, pickled 10 " 

" raw 10 " 

" salted 10 " 

India-rubber, unmanufactured 10 " 

" milk of 10 " 

Orchil 10 " 

Pig tin 15 " 

Eeindeer skins, raw 10 " 

Rubies 5 " 

Sheep-skins in the wool 10 " 

Shoddy 20 " 

Silk 25 " 

Skins, pickled 10 " 

" dried ": 10 " 

" fur, raw or undressed 10 " 

" kid, undressed 10 " 

Soda ash free. 

Muriatic acid 10 " 

Nickel 10 " 

Rags for the manufacture of paper free. 

Hair of alpaca goats and of other animals unknown, costing 18 

cents per pound ' 5 " 

Wool, where the value is less than IS cents per pound 5 " 

Wool, in the skm 10 " 

This last duty on wool admits a large portion of the raw material used 
!by the woollen manufactiu'er substantially free. In 1863 there was im- 
ported into the United States 71,882,128 pounds, costing $12,290,630, 
averaging less than 17 cents per pound. The duty therefore on the 
quantity imported was about 8^ mills per pound. The wool is of a very 
fair grade, although dirty. It comes directly in competition with the 
American wool-grower. It is a discrimination in favor of the manufac- 
turer against the farmer. And upon this quantity imported the manufac- 
turer charges upon the consumer the enormous bounty which the com- 
bined tariff and paper-money systems enable him to charge. 

I have shown to what an enormous extent labor is being robbed by 
the unjust discriminations in favor of the privileged fcAV. We punish the 
robbery of one individual by another. We hang those who take human 
life with malice pi'epense. But what shall we say of a Government which 
robs one class by wholesale to gratify the avarice of another, or of a 
Congress which takes away from the laboring poor the " means whereby 
they live," which is life itself to them? Even political economy, rising 
out of its unimpassioned logic into the higher sphere of moral science, con- 
templates the existence of such outrages only to denounce them with in 



60 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

digiiation. That great and good man to whom I have referred, and fronc 
whose lips I learned the lessons of political economy and moral science. 
Dr. Wayland, thus analyzes, reprehends, and pictures the conseqxiencet^ 
of such oppressive legislation as that now proposed. He says : 

" The right of property may be violated by society. It sometimes happens that societjy 
or government, which is its agent, though it may prevent the infliction of wrong byy 
individuals upon individuals, is itself by no means averse to inflicting wrong or violating,^! 
the right of individuals. This is done where Governments seize upon the property of in-i- 
dividuals by mere arbitrary act, a form of tyranny with which all the nations of Europed 
were of old too well acquainted. It is also done by unjust legislation ; that is, when le- 
gislators, how well so ever chosen, enact unjust laws by which the property of a part or 
of the whole is unjustly taken away, or unjustly subjected to oppressive taxation. 

" Of all the destructive agencies which can be brought to bear upon production, by 
far the most fatal is pubUc oppression. It drinks up the spirit of a people by inflicting; 
wrong through means of an agency which was created for the sole purpose of preventing; 
wrong, and which was intended to be the ultimate and faithful refuge of the friendless. . i 
When the antidote to evil becomes the source of evil, what hope for man is left ? When i 
society itself sets the example of peculation, what shall prevent the individuals of the so- 
ciety fi'ora imitating that example ? Hence, pubUc injustice is always the prolific parent 
of private violence. The result is that capital emigrates, production ceases, and a nation 
either sinks down in hopeless despondence, or else the people, harassed beyond endurance 
and believing that their condition cannot be made worse by any change, rush into all the 
horrors of civil war ; the social elements are dissolved ; the sword enters every house ; 
the holiest ties which bind men together are severed ; and no prophet can predict at the 
beginning what will be the end." — Wayland's Political Economy, p. 115. 

From the same wise source I have been taught that wars may keep 
the most enterprising and industrious nation always poor ; and that had 
Great Britain not expended in wars the incalculable sums — almost equal 
to our own expenditures — which the past hundred years might otherwise 
have added to her operative capital, there would hardly have remained 
the recollection of poverty on her shores. 

We are pursuing her career, with this difference, that in war we are 
our own enemies : while we are exhausting our foe wc are exhausting 
ourselves. We are approaching the abysses of poverty, therefore, incon- 
ceivably faster than ever England did. 

No scheme was ever before devised in this or any other country so 
sure to accelerate a nation to its downfall as the present and proposed tariff. 
No scheme ever operated so thoroughly and rapidly to transfer wealth 
from the pockets of the many to those of the few ; from the hands of 
labor to the coffers of capital, and that, too, without a particle of con- 
sideration. If this system shall continue in operation even for the small 
period of five years, it will change the whole face of society in this coun- 
try ; nor can I fail to see that the rich, who are rioting in the honest gains 
of the poor man, may share with the poor the horrors of that future. If 
in this once happy and prosperous land, poverty rises with its ghastly mul- 
titudes, to cut the throat of wealth and then gash itself in the wild im- 
patience of its o^vn hard fate, let the authors of this war and its unequal 
burdens bear the crime and curse, and seek such mercy as Heaven may 
grant to those who despoil the poor for the gratification of their unhal- 
lowed avarice. Gradually we are approaching that terrible future. This 
iniquitous tariff system is accomplishing the results aimed at by the lead- 
ers of old Federalism — the distinctions of classes, the subjugation of labor 



FINANCES, TAEIFFS, ETC. 61 

to capital, the clegi'adation of the masses, and the inauguration of a con- 
centrated and strong Government. 

Hence, said I not truly that this question involved the problem of lib- 
erty? For the party in power, in addition to their oppressive taxation, 
strike at the individuality and independence of the States — the great dis- 
tinctive and conservative feature of our national system, and which is 
absolutely essential to the preservation of the liberties of the people. 
They have established a paper-money banking system, under the control 
of the General Government, which concentrates power in the Adminis- 
tration for the time being, and gives it control over the property and pe- 
cuniary interests of the people. They expend the people's money without 
scruple or stint, never listening to the suggestions of economy nor the 
admonitions of prudence, nor heeding the sufferings which follow from 
the burdens of taxation. Here they vote appropriations for every con- 
ceivable project, constitutional or not. They squander the public lands, 
one of the sources of revenue which can help to relieve the people from 
taxation, on every conceivable project suggested by speculation. They 
boldly and shamelessly bring the power of the national Government, both 
civil and military, in conflict with the freedom of elections and the hberty 
of the press. They virtually suppress these great franchises of the Ameri- 
can people. In short, the party in power has instituted a crusade of per- 
fidy against the institutions of the country and the liberties of the people, 
which they preach with exulting and shameless audacity, on the pretext 
of preserving the Union. 

As the proper concomitant of these acts we have this tariff system, 
which is to be thrust on the patience of a hitherto long-forbearing people. 
Will they meekly bow to this new burden? It may be that there is no 
retributive justice in Heaven. We cannot, however, yet believe that the 
almighty Ruler of nations has abandoned our bleeding country to the 
caprice and wickedness of the leaders of the party in power. Despotic 
thrones, supported by absolute authority, have in the lapse of time been 
shaken and have fallen before the wrath of the Supreme Avenger,, mani- 
fested through the awful might and passion of outraged peoples. Such 
is the lesson of history. Warned by such examples, the men now in 
power in this country need not hope to escape that retributive vengeance 
which their crimes against our country and constitutional liberty so justly 
merit. 



THE IMMENSE APPROPRIATIONS SES^CE THE WAR.— FUTURE QUESTIONS OF 

FINANCE. 

On the 2d day of March, 1865, Mr. Cox introduced a measure to di- 
vide the Committee of Ways and Means ; and briefly pointed out the im- 
mense issues involved in the financial questions which the war had pro- 
duced : 

In relation to the division of the Committee of Ways and Means, I 
desire to show the importance and immensity of the labor imposed upon 



62 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

that committee, with a view to a division of the labor. We divide the 
Ways and Means into three committees. The Ways and Means are still 
preserved, and their future duty is to provide "ways and means," that is, 
raise revenue for carrying on the Government. This includes, of course, 
the tariff, the internal revenue, the loan bills, legal-tender notes, and aU 
other matters connected with supporting the credit and raising money. 
The amendments confine the duty of the Committee of Ways and Means 
simply to ways and means. That was their original and proper sphere. 

The proposed Committee on Appropriations have, under this amend- 
ment, the examination of the estimates of the Departments, and exclu- 
sively the consideration of all appropriations. I need not dilate upon the 
importance of having hereafter one committee to investigate with nicest 
heed all matters connected with economy. The tendency of the time is 
to extravagance in private and in public. We require of this new com- 
mittee their whole labor in the restraint of extravagant and illegal ap- 
propriations. 

As to the Committee on National Banks and Currency, that is noi 
necessarily connected with the other committees. They have a differeni 
province. They have in charge all the banking interests of the countryj 
These interests are so connected by the relations of exchanges and cur 
rency with bank issues and banking capital in the States, that it is as 
much as one committee can well do to study these questions properly. It 
is utterly impossible in the present condition of our finances that one 
committee can do all this labor, and do it as well as these interests de- 
mand. The Committee on Rules do not by this measure mean to cast any 
reflection upon the Committee of Ways and Means. They have labored 
faithfully, but no set of men, however enduring their patience, studious 
their habits, or gigantic their mental ^'asp, when overburdened with the 
labor incident to the existing monetary condition of the country growing 
out of this unparalleled civil strife, can do this labor as well as the people 
have a right to expect of their Representatives. Therefore we propose to 
divide the labor of the Committee of Ways and Means. We would not, 
and could not if we would, dim the lustre of their names, or depreciate 
the value of their services. I think that they have been well selected by 
the Speaker. They do not need any compliment from me. It is hardly 
necessary to mention them in order that the House may recall their con- 
spicuous ability, their indefatigable industry, their abundant information, 
their legal talents, and their knowledge of finance. 

Each member of the Ways and Means has his specialty — ^Sach 
Olympian ; and as Spenser describes the gods, 

" Each easy to be known by his own visnomie, 
But Jove above them all by his great looks and power imperial." 

And yet, sir, poAverfuUy as the committee is constituted, even their 
powers of endurance, physical and mental, are not adequate to the great 
duty which has been imposed by the emergencies of this historic time. 
It is an old adage, that "whoso wanteth rest will also want of might ; " 
and even an Olympian would faint and flag if the burden of Atlas were 
not relieved by the broad shoulders of Hercules. 

I might give here a detailed statement of the amount of business 



FINANCES, TAEIFrS, ETC. 63 

thrown upon that committee since the commencement of the war. But I 
prefer to append it to my remarks. Whereas befoi'c the war we scarcely 
expoided more than $70,000,000 a year, now, during the five sessions of 
the last two Congresses, there has been an average appropriation of at 
least $800,000,000 per session. The statement Avhich I hold in my hand 
shows that during the first and extra session of the Thirty-seventh Con- 
gress there came appropriation bills from the Committee of Ways and 
Means amounting to $226,091,457.99. I say nothing now of the loan and 
other fiscal bills emanating from that committee. During the second session 
of that Congress bills were reported to the amount of $883,029,987.14 ; 
and during the last session of that Congress $972,827,829.90. During 
the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress appropriation bills were 
reported amounting to $788,124,021.94, and during the present session I 
suppose it would be a fair estimate to take the appropriations of the last 
session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, say $900,000,000 ! 

These are appropriation bills alone. They are stupendous, and but 
poorly symbolize the immense labors Avhich the internal revenue, tariff, 
and loan bills imposed on the committee. Neither do they represent the 
actual appropriations ; for the House has frequently increased these bills 
enormously. The aggregate of these appropriation bills reaches the 
astounding amount of $3,770,673,296.97, or nearly four thousand million 
dollars ! For the army alone the appropriation bills during the past five 
sessions are over three thousand millions ! And this business of appro- 
priations is perhaps not one half of the labor of the committee. TTiere 
are various and important matters upon which they' act, but upon which 
they never report. Their duties comprehend all the varied interests of 
the United States ; every element and branch of industry, and every dollar 
or dime of value. They are connected with taxation, tariffs, banking, 
loan bills, and ramify to every fibre of the body-politic. All the springs 
of wealth and labor are more or less influenced by the action of this 
committee. Their responsibility is immense, and their control almost 
imperial over the necessities, comforts, homes, hopes, and destinies of the 
people. All the values of the United States, which in the census of 1860 
(page 194) amount to nearly seventeen thousand million dollars, or, to be 
exact, $16,159,616,068, are affected by the action of that committee, even 
before their action is approved by the House. Those values fluctuate 
whenever the head of the Ways and Means rises in his place and proposes 
a measiu-e. The price of every article we use trembles when he proposes 
a gold bill, or a loan bill, or any bill to tax directly or indirectly. In ten 
years these values increased at the rate of more than one hundred and 
twenty-six per cent., adding in one decade $8,925,481,011 to our real 
and personal property. Since this war began these values have been 
drawn upon to give credit and cash to the Government, and so drawn 
upon that one-half of the increase and one-fourth of aU of these values are 
already practically under mortgage. Can one committee properly pass 
upon the immense interests thus bound up, and reaching down to other 
generations? Not only every rood of land has now to sustain its living 
occupant, but it has to sustain soldiers in the field and sailors on the sea, 
who are not producing, but destroying, what is wrought from the soil. 
Nay, more, it has to pay its tribute to the creditor of the nation, not only 



64 EIGHT YEAES IK CONGRESS. 

in the present, but to the inheritor of our national bonds. The laborer 
who works now his ten houi's per diem, must work four hours more for J 
the creditor of the nation. Thus is our nation being overburdened by the 
legislation of to-day ; burdened for the present and for the future. Is it 
not best to give eveiy facility for the crystallization of the wisest financial 
policy ? And does not this measure assume greater importance because 
of its far-i'eachiug effects upon our finances and our future? Without 
discussing the wisdom of our present system of finance, is it not important, 
in this day when these debts are growing, to have the system as nearly 
safe and just as possible? Have we not already, like other nations, 
instead of .providing for the principal, provided only for the interest of 
these great debts ? What follows ? That money borrowed, being obtained 
without sweat or sacrifice, is spent lightly, without economy or care. 
Dr. Arnold well says, that " a revenue raised at the expense of posterity 
is sure to be squandered wastefully. Waste begets want, and the sums 
raised by loans wiU commonly be large." If that be true, is it not a cogent 
reason for the separation of the old committee which borrows from the 
committee which pays ? One will be a veto on the other ; and something 
of economy may be gained, and something of extravagance restrained. 

Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to discuss this change of our rules 
in its details. But is there not a necessity for some change ? Is it not 
wise to divide such labors as have been described? Who wishes to 
overwork any set of gentlemen in this or any future Congress ? There 
are gentlemen who will be in the next Congress when this change shall 
take effect, who will be glad to share with the old committee the 
solution of these financial jDroblems. These problems are soon to 
agitate the country above all other questions. Peace and war depend 
upon them. They rise higher than peace or war. They rise higher 
than the freedom and slavery of the blacks. Perpetual and enor- 
mous debt is slavery for body and mind. Hence the interests con- 
nected with these economical questions are of aU questions those most 
momentous for the future. Parties, statesmanship, union, stability, all 
depend upon the manner in which tliese questions are dealt with. Shall 
the tariff be one of bounty or of revenue only? Shall a Chinese policy 
ward off all foreign interchange from our shores ? Or shall protection, so 
long abandoned by the scientific and practical men of our generation, be 
again introduced into our economy ? Shall taxes be levied equally on the 
rich and poor? Shall the funded debt of this nation be paid to tJie few 
in gold by the sweat of the many? Shall labor be held in thrall and 
branded as the serf of capital? Shall one interest or section be pam- 
pered at the expense and poverty of another? Shall we forever bury 
and keep buried the symmetric system of a gold and silver currency, as 
the standard of the Constitution and of nature, under the lush growth of 
greenbacks and paper promises? When this war shall end, and the 
present inflation has collapsed; when the "stocks on hand" of mer- 
chant and capitalist shall have suffered in the wreck of credit and crash 
of paper money ; when " settling day " shall come and the meretricious 
splendors of fictitious wealth shall fade ; when the diamonds of to-day 
shall become the paste of to-morrow ; when speculation shall no longer 
flaunt its upstart pretension in the face of merit and modesty ; when a 



FDfANCES, TAHrETS, ETC.' 65 

common ruin shall ingulf both poor and rich ; when the gilded vessel 
gliding so smoothly over this smooth summer sea of delusive prosperity 
shall meet the " Vv'hirlwind's sweepy sway ;" then who will direct the 
whirlwind and who temper the storm ? Why not now, in the present, look 
these dangers in the face, and by prescience avert them? As an adjunct 
in this work, let these finance committees have time and opjjortunity to 
do their work, and then it may be well done. This can only be done by 
a division of their hibor as proposed by this amendment. Whichever 
party deals by these questions most nearly in the interests of labor — the 
procreant source of all wealth and taxes — that party will have and keep 
the ascendency in the poKtical control of the Government. 
5 



n. 

SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 

Impaetial history v/ill not fail to record the efforts and doctrines of 
those who held to the supremacy of a higher law than the Constitution. 
Although a resuscitation of such discussions may seem inappropriate, they 
have their lessons. I insert a series of speeches, mostly in the ad homi- 
nem vein, upon the lawlessness engendered at the North. Such conduct 
provoked its like. Some of those speeches have the dramatic form of 
quick and earnest colloquy. The sentiment which originally antagonized 
with the fugitive slave law, never flagged till its repeal in 1864. These 
speeches show the progress of the Republican party from the time it gave 
a faint and echoless voice against the Federal statutes as to slavery, until 
its antagonism became defiant and successful. 

The first running debate, in which these tendencies of the Republican 
leaders were developed, was on the occasion of an attack by Mr. Giddings, 
on the 15th of January, 1859, on the Democratic party for its complicity 
with the slave trade. In this debate he called out his younger colleague, 
whom he had accused of " skulking behind the bush." I pressed him on 
the question of negro suffrage in return. He was not ready to answer 
then, as he expected to be a candidate for Governor. Avoiding and stiU 
avoiding the questions propounded as to allowing negroes to vote, the col- 
loquy ended thus : 

Mr. Cox. Answer the question, sir. The gentleman talked about my 
hiding under the bush. Let him come out, if he dare, from his covert. 
[Laughter.] 

Mr. Giddings. I say that I do not interfere in this question as to 
superiority between the Democrats and the negroes. 

Mr. Cox. He talk of his Democratic colleague skulking under the 
bush ! He dare not answer my question. I will not press the gentle- 
man llirther. My respect for him will not allow me to put him to the 
torture further. He never could get the nomination for the governorship 
if he had answered my question categorically ; and I am anxious he should 
be nominated. [Laughter.] 



SEDITION IN THE NOETH. 67 

Mr. GiDDiNGS. So far as the Democratic party is concerned, I repeat 
that I judge the Africans by their intelligence and virtue. I do not enter 
into the quarrel between them with flie Republicans. I do not mean to 
put them on an equality with the Republicans. 

Mr, Cox. The gentleman does not answer my question. I therefore 
will not press him further. All that I wished was to put the Democratic 
party right in regard to this matter of slavery ; and they are right on it, 
being neither an anti-slavery nor a pro-slavery party. The gentleman may 
go on and get the nomination for the governorship, and make his alliance, 
if he can, in northern and southern Ohio, and we will meet him at 
Philippi. 

It is enough to say that Mr. Giddings never became a candidate for 
Governor. He was lectured by the Anti-Slavery Standard for not being 
more courageous in this debate for the right of the negro to vote. But 
he ceased not until his decease to advocate his radical notions. He was 
not returned to the 36th Congress. Subsequently, on the 9th of February, 
1861, Mr. Cox had another running debate with the successor of Mr. 
Giddings, in which (far too harshly) he characterized the ruinous effect 
of Mr. GiDDENGS's political views. This debate is thus reported : 

NORTHERN NULLIFIERS. 

Mr. Cox. I was surprised that my colleague from the Ashtabula 
district, at the conclusion of his attack upon my colleague (Governor 
Corvvin), should have attacked me. Why he did so, I know not ; unless 
it be from the fact that I asked him a question in explanation of his argu- 
ment about incendiary publications to provoke insurrection. I asked him 
the question, whether or not he was in favor of suppressing all such pub- 
lications as the Helper book and Theodore Parker's programme, published 
in the Tribune, for the robbery and murder of masters by their slaves to 
obtain their freedom? The gentleman did not answer the question. He 
evaded it ; for he knew that he represented a constituency who are con- 
tinually preaching and publishing that very sedition of which my colleague 
fMr. Cor win] complained, and of which he [Mr. Hutchins] is the de- 
fender, and of which John Brown was the exemplar. The gentleman 
knew, when he covered his attack upon Governor Corwin by his attack 
upon me, that he represented some of the very men who had been engaged 
in raids upon their neighbors' lives and property. I cannot, sir, fail to 
remember that his sensibility about certain disclosures that have transpired 
in relation to the Republican executive of Ohio, in refusing to deliver to 
Virginia such miscreants, is no doubt caused by the fact that some of the 
renegades and rascals of John Brown's conspiracy had a protecting ajgis 
in the conspiring treason of his own district. I state these facts openly, 
and in my place, because they are wrongs, and with a view to their rem- 
edy by proper measures. But, sir, I wanted to call attention especially to 
an ungenerous attack upon myself. I did not expect it from the gentle- 
man. He said I was always very busy in the House furnishing fads, — ^yes, 



68 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

fads, sir — for Southern members to attack the North here. I would like 
him to name the Southern man to whom I furnished facts, in the manner 
or for the purpose stated. Name tim, if you can ! I will pause for you 
to name one. 

Mr. HuTCHiNS. I think that when the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 
Leake, was discussing the conduct of Governor Dennison — 

Mr. Cox. Yes, sir ; I Avas about to refer to that. I asked the privi- 
lege of Governor Leake to take the floor ; and in my place I gave the 
facts to the House and the country, and not to Governor Leake ; I gave 
them with a view to the proper remedy, and from no other motive. I 
meet these issues openly, here and elsewhere. I stand here with a duty 
to the whole country. I speak not alone for my own district and my 
own State. But when I have information that the Constitution and laws 
have been violated anywhere, and that gross wrongs have been done to 
our own mother State of Virginia and our own sister State of Kentucky, 
I will never hesitate, both here and at home, to denounce the unfaithful 
men, even though they do disgrace the State of Ohio. [Applause in the 
galleries.] The gentleman undertakes to acknowledge that I am a Union 
man. "What an admission to come from the successor of Joshua R. 
Giddings ! [Renewed applause.] How refreshing from a man like my 
colleague, who was nominated and elected because he was more radical 
than Mr. Giddings himself! Mr. Giddings could teach insurrection. 
We know how he taught it here for twenty years. He could organize 
conspiracies in the gentleman's district, for the purpose of attacking the 
officers of the law and defeating its execution — not stopping at murder to 
accomplish such designs. He could advise the " shooting down as pirates" 
of officers engaged in executing the laws of the United States. If Mr. 
Giddings, who had no scruples as to murder in defeating the law, was left 
at home, how far would the gentleman go, wlio superseded Mr. Giddings, 
because he was more ultra and reliable than Mr. Giddings ? 

Mr. HuTCHiNS. Toward my colleague, personally, I entertain no 
other feeling than that of kindness. Against his political acts I have had, 
and now have, some little criticism to make ; because, on every possible 
occasion that he could get the ear of this House, he has seen fit to de- 
nounce my constituents as enemies to the Union, and as abettors of the 
raid of John Brown. He even brought against the judges of the State 
the charge of singing the Marseillaise on the bench ; and also against the 
citizens of the Western Reserve the same charge of singing the same 
patriotic song — through their noses. [Laughter.] 

The gentleman has made an attack upon Mr. Giddings. He needs no 
defence from me. His acts in this House for twenty years will stand the 
test of criticism now and hereafter. Attacks are frequently made upon 
him by members here ; and I will only say, that his name will be remem- 
bered with gi-atitude when the names of those who assail him are for- 
gotten. I deny that he has countenanced insurrection on this floor or 
elsewhere. 

Now, this is all that I desired to say. I am willing that my constit- 
uents shall stand by their record, shall stand by their position. I will 
stand by mine. I am in favor of the Union as it is, and as our fathers 
gave it to us ; but I do not think it can be preserved by sacrificing those 



SEDITION IN THE NOETH. 69 

•very principles on Avhich it is based. If the cansc of liberty is to be 
beti-ayed and crucified in the year of grace 1861, I trust that there will 
not be found among its apostles a betrayer and crucifier. 

Mr. Cox. The last remark of the gentleman shows just -where he is. 
He says he is for the Union, but with an "if and an and ;" qualifying his 
remark with the phrase that he is only for the Union, " if liberty be not 
crucified." He knows, or ought to know, that the Union is the only 
shield of liberty. But he means, if he means any thing, that, if there be 
power in the Government to crush out slavery, either ifi the Territories 
or in States, then he is for the Union ; but he is not for it, if it does not 
give that power. He is not for it, unless he can make it the instrument 
of his fanaticism. I say that I am for the Union, without qualification 
or condition, now and all the time. I will do what the gentleman will 
not — yield and compromise much for its salvation. The gentleman said 
in his speech a while ago, that I would be for the Union provided the 
Eepublican party should be crushed out. I do not know, Mr. Speaker, 
but that it may be necessary to roll the Juggernaut car over this Repub- 
lican party to save the Union ; but I woidd even be willing to give a 
lease of powder for fifty years to that party, if I could see that it would 
conduct the Government on principles like those of my colleague (Mr. 
Corwin), which would preserve the Union. I would be willing to sur- 
render party supremacy, if thereby we could keep the old stars and stripes 
floating over the national Congress. [Applause.] 

IN'Ir. Speaker, there are various classes of Republicans. The gentle- 
man [Mr. HuTCHiNs] belongs to the worst of the Abolition wing ; and well 
may he defend his predecessor, Mr. Giddings. That godless old man, 
after spending a public life devoted to hate, ill will, and sedition, was 
retired because he did one thing that was right — voted for the Crittenden- 
Montgomery bill. He has since been making up for his loss of office by 
the virulence of his spleen and the outlawry of his conduct. He has, as 
I have once shoAvn here, instigated servile insurrections ; and now, at the 
end of a misspent life, w^hich is scarcely silvered by a ray of benignity, he 
finds, as the consequence of his teaching and conduct, a disrupted Union, 
a terrified people, and the prospect of unending hate and bloody strife. 
If there was mercy for the thief upon the cross, there may be mercy for 
him. God grant him repentance before he fills his dishonored grave ! 
But what a life he has lived ! He talked the language of love to the black 
race only to hide his hate for the white race who people our southern 
States. He paraded humanitarian phrases, and took upon his profane lips 
the name of God, only to cloak his malice and sanctify his hate. He has 
had, in specific wickedness, many rivals; but if we measure men's guilt 
by the objects upon which they are bent, who can tell the magnitude of 
that portentous crime which causelessly dismembers to destroy the Amer- 
ican Republic? As such a Republic has no parallel, so such a criminal 
has no peer. But my colleague praises him and commends him to im- 
mortal honor ! Nero had a friend, who placed immortelles upon his tomb, 
and the worst fiends of the French revolution had their defenders after 
death ; but were this old man now dead, and thus powerless in his party 
at home, even my colleague would shrink from the task of embalming his 
bad memory. It will, after death, only be remembered to be execrated. 



\. 



70 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

Hi3 late letters to my colleague [Mr. Corwin] and his compatriot, Mr. 
E^v^NG, show that age, which so often reclaims the most reprobate soul, 
has not withered — nor custom, which so often tires of its baleful work, 
has not staled — the infinite variety of his malice and his madness. His- 
tory, in its record of this great anti-slavery sedition of the North, and the 
consequent revolution in the South, wiU only picture the whiteness of his 
hair, to contrast it with the blackness of that purpose, which for years 
and years has pursued a crusade whose terrible consummation is upon us, 
in the crumbling away of our States and the destruction of their unity. 

The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Corwin] belongs to a different class 
of Republicans. He is of that class with which I most agree in these 
matters of conciliation for the Union. He has reported a proposition in 
respect to the return of fugitives from justice, which was in response to a 
resolution that I offered some time ago, and which is called for by a 
resolution offered within a few days by a leading Republican member of 
the Ohio Legislature. I am in favor of that measure of the Committee of 
Thirty-three. But my colleague [Mr. Hutchins] attacks it. Why? Be- 
cause the United States Judges, and not a Republican Governor, will then 
be in the position to take the John Browns and Oliver Browns and Mer- 
riams out of his district, so that he cannot thereafter get their votes. 

There are several classes of Republicans. There is a pious class ; 
there is a cursing class ; there is a fighting class ; and there is a patriotic 
class. The gentleman [Mr. Hutchins] belongs to the pious class ; 
they believe all they say. The doughty member from Ohio [Mr. Ash- 
ley] — who interfered so ungenerously to prevent me from replying — 
belongs to the cursing class. They do not believe any thing, but profess 
just enough to get them into Congress. The fighting class are very 
brave — in time of peace. I will not name those who belong to this class. 
Then there is another class, composed of those who have a leaven of 
patriotic feeling. My colleagues [Messrs. Corwin aud Stanton] be- 
long to this latter class. But they have not the confidence of the body of 
their party in Ohio. [A voice : " How do you know that?"] How do 
I know it ! Because your party in convention, last year and the year be- 
fore, passed resolutions almost unanimously, that the fugitive slave law 
was unconstitutional, and should not be executed. Can you agree to that ? 

Mr. Stanton. The gentleman does not state the resolution correctly. 
Every member of the committee that reported it agreed to that resolution. 

Mr. Cox. I could state the very words of it, if it were necessary ; 
and I have stated the meaning and the substance of it. It declared that 
the fugitive slave law was " subversive of both the rights of the States 
and the liberties of the people, and was contrary to the plainest duties of 
humanity and justice, and abhorrent to the moral sense of the civilized 
world." Is the gentleman in favor of executing an outrage upon the civil- 
ized world ? [Laughter.] Yes, sir, his whole party are committed to 
the demoralization of the Federal authority, not only by such resolutions, 
but by judicial decision. Why, the gentleman himself [Mr. Stanton] 
voted for the chief justice of his State ; and he knew, and they all knew, 
that when he was nominated and elected, the issue was made upon that 
judge's decision, overruling the decision of the Supreme Court of the 
United States in favor of the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law. 



SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 71 

Here is where disunion begins. It begins at home, sir ; in your own 
State and in your own party and in your own breast. Your party re- 
elected a man because he had nullified the Constitution ; because he 
had broken the oath which he had taken before God, to support the Con- 
stitution of the United States. The whole party in that vote (including 
my colleagues) were guilty of moral treason. [Applause in the galler- 
ies.] 

Mr. Stanton. I should like very much to have about five minutes to 
reply to my colleague. [Cries of " Go on ! " and " Object ! "] 

Mr. BuKNETT. I have no objection to the gentleman going on for five 
minutes, if his colleague [Mr. Cox] may have another five minutes in re- 
ply. I want to see a fair fight, if this thing is to go on. [Cries of 
" Agreed !"] 

Mr. Sickles. I desire to know, before the gentleman from Ohio pro- 
ceeds with his remarks, whether it is understood that his colleague in 
front of me [Mr. Cox] is to have the right to reply. 

It being " agi'eed " that Mr. Cox should respond, Mr. Stanton was 
allowed to speak. 

Mr. Stanton. I do not care myself, personally, any thing about the 
remarks of my colleague ; but for the sake of the truth of history, and to 
prevent misrepresentation of the party to which I belong, I desii-e to cor- 
rect what has been so often said here, as to myself and the chairman of 
the Committee of Thirty-three not being representative men of the Repub- 
lican party. 

Now, sir, I was a member of the committee that reported the resolu- 
tion to which my colleague has so frequently referred in debate upon this 
floor. I concurred in that resolution then, and I concur in it to-day. I 
hold a fugitive slave law which authorizes the capture of freemen without 
the slightest chance of trial, without a hearing before any court or any 
officer known to the law, to be an outrage upon civilization. Now, Mr. 
Speaker, when we denounced that fugitive slave law, we did not recognize 
the right of each man, upon his own responsibility, to nullify and resist 
its execution or to question its constitutionality. We understand perfectly 
well that that question is to be tested by the judicial tribunals ; and I hold 
it to be the duty of every good citizen to acquiesce in the judgment of 
such tribunal, whatever it may be, until it shall be reversed by a higher 
tribunal. That is the position of the Republican party of Ohio. But, sir, 
I am told that I voted for a judge who held this fugitive slave law to be 
unconstitutional. I certainly did so vote, and I certainly shall always 
vote for a judge with strict reference to his integrity and his capacity, 
without considering the question as to whether I concur with him upon 
every decision he makes upon the bench or not. * * « 

Mr. Cox. My colleague from Ohio [Mr. Stanton] steps in advance 
of my colleague from the Ashtabula district [Mr. Hutchins], to shield 
him. 

Mr. Stanton. Not at all. 

Mr. Cox. Yes, sir ; for he knows very well he is not as obnoxious, in 
the respect to which I referred, as the gentleman from the Ashtabula dis- 



72 EIGHT YEAKS m CONGEESS. 

trict. The gentleman makes a sort of defence foi* his support of Judge 
Brinkerlioff. Now, sir, I have some respect for tlie gentleman from the 
Ashtabula district [Mr. Hutchins], because he believes what he says, and 
will stand up, under all circumstances, for the doctrines of his party. He 
defends Judge Brinkerhoff even in respect to the nullification of the fugi- 
tive slave law ; but the other gentleman from Ohio says, " Oh, no ! I do 
not defend Judge BrinkerhofFs nullification doctrine, but I voted for him, 
because I am for an independent judiciary." Well, sir, I do not take 
issue with him upon that point as to the independence of the judiciary ; 
but I do take issue with him when he claims that such independence 
should be sustained when it becomes nullification. It may become those 
who think like myself, but it does not become gentlemen who voted for 
this judge, to find fault with southern men because they have nullified the 
Federal authority, when, by the confession of my colleague before the 
nation to-day, he, and two hundred and twelve thousand other Ohio Re- 
pubhcans, voted for a chief justice of that State on the question being 
made whether or not the Constitution of the country should stand. He 
voted by his own confession for a judge v/ho had, in so far as he could, 
nullified that Constitution. 

That judge had decided that " the decision of the United States Court 
on these questions should settle nothing ; " and my colleague voted for 
him. He declared " against the omnipotence of the Federal power" with 
respect to these very questions fixed in the Constitution ; and my col- 
league justified that judge by his vote, by his action, and by the action of 
his party. He did this on the direct issue being made and understood, 
from one end of the State to the other. Though he did not agree with 
his decision, yet he sustained the unjust judge. I would also vote for a 
judge, though I differed 'from him on a matter involving dollars, or a 
horse, or a contract, or something of that nature ; but I will pause when 
his decision is subversive of order, law, authority, and the Constitution. 
When the Constitution of the country is at stake ; when southern States 
are convulsed by the action of noi'thern States, violative of confederative 
faith ; when this very question is mooted from one end of the country to 
the other ; then, for a great party to meet in convention, repudiate a law 
of Congress declared to be constitutional by the supreme judicial tribunal, 
and justify by nominating the man who had nullified it, is it not mon- 
strous ? Then for such men to come here and claim to support the Con- 
stitution and the Union ! Why, sir, Avith some it may be ignorance ; 
with others inconsistency ; with the rest hypocrisy ; but with all, treason ! 
I shall leave to my colleagues their choice of these classifications. What 
have they done but broken down the Constitution by insidious sapping and 
mining — almost as bad, if not worse, than the bold, open, rebellious breaches 
of the laws of the United States, such as we unhappUy see in our extreme 
southern States, i 

UEPLY TO BIK. CORWrN. REVOLUTIONARY ABOLITIONISM. 

On the 8th of December, 1859, Mr. Cox exposed all the seditious acts 
of the Republicans, compelled to do so as a vindication of the people of 
his State, who then discountenanced such conduct. This speech was 



SEDITION EST THE NOKTH. 73 

made during the contest for Speaker, when Mr. John Sherman was a 
candidate, and when Ohio politics were in question. 

Mr. Cox. I wish that some other member from the State from which I 
come, would answer the very facetious and sophistical argument of my 
colleague from the district near my own [Mr. Corwin]. I do not think, 
sir, that he differs so much from the Democratic party as perhaps his 
position here might lead us to believe. Nor do I believe that the 
masses of the Republican party in the State of Ohio approve of his senti- 
ments as here enunciated. I have always thought in my own mind, that 
the distinguished gentleman — and I have always quietly given him a great 
deal of credit for it — went into the Republican party with his national 
sentiments, for the purpose of breaking down its sectionalism and destroy- 
ing its distinctive features. But his speech to-day ought not to go to the 
country without some response from a Democratic member from his 
own State. This response I will endeavor to give, without premeditation 
or preparation. 

It seems to me pi'oper, as the nominee presented by the Republican 
party for Speaker is a Republican from the State of Ohio, that the poli- 
tics of the Republican party of that State, of which he is an exponent, 
should be discussed. I am ready to say here, that that nominee is per- 
, sonally as unexceptionable to the Democratic party as any man of the 
other side, unless it might be my friend who has just taken his seat [Mr. 
Corwen]. I know that my friend paid his respects to me and my dis- 
trict last year. He then charged me with inconsistencies which are not 
quite so glaring as those which he has exhibited here to-day. But I give my 
acknowledgment to the gentleman for the increased vote which the Demo.- 
cratic ticket received in that district, in consequence of the national 
speeches that he made there. A great many of the people of southern 
Ohio, national men, and Democrats, coincide in the remarks of my col- 
league [Mr. Corwin] ; but it is not true that what he has said embodies 
the principles of the Republican party. It is not true that he speaks for 
their organization in Ohio. It is not true that he speaks the sentiments 
of their platform. I will show you, before I sit down, that that organiza- 
tion is one subversive of the Constitution, one that strikes down the judges 
of the State for daring to sustain that Constitution, and that the men 
in that party in Ohio, who do not go along with the men who speak 
the abolition sentiment of the Western Reserve, are mercilessly slaugh- 
tered. 

I know, sir, that gentlemen stand here upon this floor, representing 
Republican constituents, who have only a slight varnish of Republicanism. 
Old Whigs go before the State convention, make their speeches, and 
present their candidates — national men — but they are always overruled. 
Conventions are turned into slaughter houses for national men, who 
still cling to the Republican party. How was it in respect to striking 
down the chief justice of our State, for nobly doing his duty? I do not 
know whether the gentleman who aspires to be speaker indorsed that move- 
ment. I hope that he belonged to that other wing who sustained Judge 
Swan in his decision in favor of the constitutionality of the fugitive slave 
law. But the fact remains, and cannot be blotted out : and so long 



74 EIGHT TEAES EST CONGKESS. 

as OHo politics are now made a national matter, and the endeavor is 
to give them a national tinge and color, I want the country to understand 
its lawless and orderless character. How did that question come up 
in the last campaign of our State ? I will give you the- facts in a few 
words : 

A Kentuckian lost his slave, who had escaped into Ohio. The slave 
went to the neighborhood of the University of Oberlin, and when he got 
there, he was aided and protected by that class of men who think that 
their inward convictions should be the highest law of their action, irrespec- 
tive of constitutional obligation. The owner of that slave found a warrant 
for his action in the Constitution and the laws passed in pursuance of it. 
He went to the United States commissioner for the process of recapture. 
He proceeded lawfully. It v^as foimd that he had a right to reclaim 
the fugitive and take him back to his service. After obtaining his writ at 
Columbus, with United States officers, he went up to the neighborhood of 
Oberlin. There the slave was arrested, and after the arrest, a party of 
persons — Plumb, Peck, and others — rescued him from the custody of the 
proper officers of the Government. The United States officers did not 
choose to lie under the odium of failing to perform their duty. They 
came to the United States court at Cleveland, and there had these Oberlin 
rescuers indicted. They had them tried — these men who have, as they 
claim, the peculiar sanction of God Almighty to rise above law in this 
country. They were convicted. And what was the result? 

Why, sir, a scheme was devised by the Republican party to break 
down that conviction. They started the idea that the law was unconsti- 
tutional. They sent for Judge Spalding, who is the fabricator of the Re- 
publican platform of 1856. He declared the fugitive slave law to be un- 
constitutional. It was urged that before punishment, the case should be 
taken before the Supreme Court. Do^vn to the Supreme Court they went, 
black and white, lawyers and politicians, down to Columbus they hurried, 
to know whether the law was constitutional or not. Wliat was the result? 
They found that we had five judges upon our supreme bench — three from 
southern Ohio and two from northern Ohio. You will bear in mind that 
there is a local sectionalism in the Republican party in Ohio, as there is a 
sectionalism in the Republican party outside. These five judges on oiu' 
supreme bench were the tribunal to try the question. Judge Swan, one 
of my constituents, lived in Columbus. He was, as it were, between the 
extremes sectionally and politically. " Now," said these gentlemen, " we 
will make these judges decide this law to be unconstitutional. Judge 
Swan's time is nearly out — how can we reach him? We will do it by 
bringing this discussion before the Supreme Court. If he does not decide 
that law to be unconstitutional, and release these men who have been 
convicted, then we will put him to tha political torture ! " Accordingly, 
the eleven counties of the Western Reserve, which give the Republicans 
their majority in the State, were appealed to ; and I want it understood 
that out of three hundred and fifty thousand votes cast in our State, there 
are one hundred and seventy-one thousand two hundred and sixty-six 
good Democratic voters who have no approbation for servile insurrection. 
[Applause upon the Democratic benches and in the galleries.] Well, 
sir, on tliis Western Reserve, these men asserted that the United States 



SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 75 

officers ought to be hung as pirates, and with this inspiration formed a 
society which they called " The Sons of Liberty." But that would not 
do. The gentleman who preceded me [Mr. CoRwra] told us about the 
Cleveland convention. That convention was intended to intimidate Judge 
Swan. They passed resolutions for that purpose. When they came to 
that meeting, they marched through the streets with seditious banners and 
seditious music. I saw a description of it in a Republican paper. First 
marclied the Sons of Liberty, with Giddings at their head — Giddings, 
who had upon this floor announced himself in favor of a servile insurrec- 
tion. They marched through the streets with banners, which were rev- 
olutionary against the Federal Government, and which were appropriate 
to Harper's Ferry. One banner is noticeable. On one side of it is writ- 
ten : " Ashtabula, Regnante Populo." On the other : " Sons of Liberty, 
1769 — Down with the Stamp Act! 1859. — Down with the Fugitive 
Act ! " Not " repeal it," for they were not then in favor of that. No 
Republican has risen in his seat here and moved to repeal that law. 
And now, though committed to its repeal by their resolutions passed in 
convention, there is not one of them who rises to move the repeal of 
that enactment ; and the very gentleman [Mr. Corwin] upon ;the com- 
mittee who reported the resolution to the convention, and who sustained 
the nominee placed upon the platform then laid down, will not vote, 
as he has told us, in favor of the repeal of that law. It was " do'mi 
with the fugitive slave law ; " crush it in the dust ; and, as if to give 
significance to their talk upon this subject, they marched through the 
streets to the music of the old French revolutionary song, the Mar- 
seillaise Hymn, that glorious inspii'ation of Democracy ; that defiance, not 
against constitutional liberty, but against despotic kingcraft. I have 
understood that these " Sons of Liberty " and the students from Oberlin 
sung it in French. Now you know our friends from New Englund, who 
made up the Sons of Liberty, have a nasal twang peculiar to theu" sing- 
ing, and the French language has the same peculiarity, and when the two 
were combined they produced the most thrilling efiect in the streets of 
Cleveland. [Laughter.] Aux armes citoyens ! Formez hataillons ! 
[Great laughter.] I can imagine how it sounded. They marched down 
ten thousand strong and appointed Giddings their chairman. Who is he? 
We have heard him in this hall. We know who he is, and of what party 
are those who stood around him here and gave him aid and comfort as he 
preached disunion and sectional doctrine. 

Yesterday, while the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Nelson] was 
addressing the House in one of these Union strains, in order to show 
up the disunionists, he quoted from the famous or infamous appeal in 
favor of servile insurrection, and of which the Harper's Ferry affair is 
the legitimate fruit. But the successor of Giddings arose and denied that 
that gentleman ever uttered such a sentiment upon this floor. That 
denial will not do. It is in the Congressional Globe, word for word, as 
the gentleman read it. It wiU be found on page 648 of the Globe of the 
first session of the Thirty-third Congress ; and I will have it read, that 
gentlemen may see where the seed was sown of which this servile insur- 
rection at Harper's Ferry was the inevitable sequence. Here is what Bii*. 
Giddings said : 



76 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

" Sir, I would intimidate no one ; but I tell you there is a spirit in the North which 
will set at defiance all the low and unworthy machinations of this Executive,- and of the 
minions of its power. When the contest shall come ; when the thunder shall roll, and the 
lightning flash ; when the slaves shall rise in the South ; when, in imitation of the Cuban 
bondsmen, the southern slaves of the South shall feel that they are men ; when they feel 
the stirring emotions of immortality, and recognize the stirring truth that they are men, 
and entitled to the rights which God has bestowed upon them ; when the slaves shall feel 
that, and when masters shall turn pale and tremble, when their dwellings shall smoke, and 
dismay sit on each countenance, then, sir, I do not say 'we will laugh at your calamity, 
and mock when your fear cometh,' but I do say, when that time shall come, the lovers of 
our race will stand forth, and exert the legitimate powers of this Government for freedom. 
We shall then have constitutional power to act for the good of our country, and do justice 
to the slave. Then will we strike off the shackles from the limbs of the slaves. That vnl\ 
be a period when this Government will have power to act between slavery and freedom, 
and when it can makepeace by giving freedom to the slaves. And let me tell you, Mr. 
Speaker, that that time hastens. It is rolling forward. The President is exerting a power 
that will hasten it, though not intended by him. I hail it as I do the approaching dawn 
of that political and moral millennium which I am well assured will come upon the 
world." 

Mr. HuTcniNS. If I mistake not, the extract read from the Globe is 
not the extract quoted by the gentleman from Tennessee yesterday. That 
extract is as foUows : 

"I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection in the South ; 
when the black man, armed with British bayonets, and led on by British officers, shall as- 
sert his freedom, and wage a war of extermination against his master. And though we 
may not. mock at their calamity, nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet we wiU hail it as 
the dawn of a political millennium." 

• Is that, word for word, what the gentleman has read ? 

Mr. Cox. I do not know nor care whether it is word for word, for I 
said yesterday that I had not compared it with the original. I said 
yesterday that the sentiment was the very same ; but there it is, from the 
Grlobe, every whit as obnoxious. 

Mr. HuTCHiNS. That is another thing. 

Mr. Cox. Let me ask the getleman if he indorses that sentiment ? 

Mr. HuTCHiNS. I will say to the gentleman that, when the House is 
organized, and I can get the floor at the proper time, I will answer all 
questions which may be put to me ; but I will not answer any now. 
[Hisses from the Democratic benches.] Will the gentleman allow me to 
ask him a question? [Cries of " Oh, no ! that won't do ! "] 

Mr. Cox. I understand that my colleague was sent here as the succes- 
sor of Mr. Giddings, because he was even yet more radical than Avas Gid- 
dings himself, who was compelled to stay at home, because, in an un- 
guarded moment, he voted for the Montgomery-Crittenden bill, which per- 
mitted the people of a Territory to form a constitution recognizing slavery. 
How that may be I know not ; but in pursuance of my other statement, 
I will refer to the Appendix of the Congressional Globe, of the same ses- 
sion, page 418, where there has been some modification of that sentiment 
of Mr. Giddings, but not such a modification as to destroy the murderous 
force and seditious intent of the extract cited by the gentleman from Ten- 
nessee. 

What I want to show, particularly to my colleague [Mr. Corwin], 
who does not diScr from me so much on this subject, is that in the last 
campaign in Ohio, he was supporting a platform entirely different from 



SEDITIOiSr m THE NOKTH. 77 

his sentiments here proclaimed. He aided a man placed upon that plat- 
form who had no affinity with his doctrines in relation either to the fugi- 
tive slave law or to the perpetuity of the Union, or the sanctity of the 
constitutional compact. 

Mr. CoRWiN. Are not the doctrines I put forward to-day the same 
as those avowed in Ohio by Governor Dennison ? 

Mr. Cox. I will answer. The gentleman sustained Governor Den- 
nison. But mark you ! at the same revolutionaiy meeting, Governor Den- 
nison was present — 

Mr. CoRWiN. No, he was not. 

Mr. Cox. He was present, as I was about to say, by letter ; more 
significant, because moi'e premeditated, than by personal presence. And 
at that meeting, which was called for the purpose of breaking down the 
law and the Constitution, this letter from Governor Dennison, dated May 
20, 1859, was read. I will read the concluding paragraph : 

" Let me express my arJeut hope that the proceedings of your convention may be 
such as will permanently contribute to the advancement of the sacred principles of free- 
dom, justice, and humanity, which have been so violently assailed by the imprisonment in 
your county jail of Plumb and Peck and their devoted colleagues, under the insulting pro- 
visions of the fugitive slave act." 

What does that mean ? My venerable friend here says — 

Mr. CoRWiN. Not venerable, if you please. 

Mr. Cox. Well, ray young friend from Ohio, then — in the presence 
of the ladies [Laughter] — my young friend says he supported Mr. Den- 
nison, who was the embodiment of the principles of the party, and he sus- 
tained him in all his principles and all his conduct. 

Mr. CoRWiN. I ask if Governor Dennison did not, in all his speeches 
in Ohio, advance the same doctrines as I did? 

Mr. Cox. If Governor Dennison advanced the same doctrines as the 
gentleman, then he must have run counter to his own most deliberate 
written statement. He says, in eiFect — " You, Plumb, and you, Peck, and 
all your ' devoted colleagues ' now in jail for breaking the law of the United 
States ; you men who have rescued from the United States officers one 
properly in their charge ; you who were guilty of breaking the law and the 
Constitution, you were engaged in the cause of liberty, humanity, and 
justice " — forsooth ! And the gentleman says he sustained Mr. Dennison, 
and the sentiments which he advocated. If he thus sustained him, 
he sustained for justice that which breaks dovra the courts ; he sustained 
for humanity and liberty that which will break down the Constitution, 
which under God is the best and the most refined system of polity ever 
vouchsafed to man for civil government. [Great applause.] 

Mr. Ashley. Did not the so-called Democratic party sustain Judge 
Ranney ? And did not Ranney oppose the fugitive slave law ? 

Mr. Cox. As to the last question — no, sir ! Judge Ranney stood 
by the fugitive slave law after it was enacted. Yes, and the old Whig 
party, too, in 1850, of which Gov. Dennison Avas a member, of which he was 
the presidential elector, approved in their platform the compromise meas- 
ures, including the fugitive slave law, as a finality on that subject. The 
gentleman near me [Mr. Bingham], I believe, then sustained the same 
measures. But last year they were found in convention voting against 



Y8 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

that finality. They regarded it as a dead letter. It was of no conse- 
quence any longer with reference to this Government. The comity between 
the States was nothing. They yielded to the " pressure " referred to by 
the gentleman [Mr. Corwin] , which came from the Reserve. 

Mr. Bingham. I imderstand my colleague to make the remark that, 
in the year 1850, I approved of the fugitive slave act. I beg leave to 
say that my colleague has fallen unintentionally into a great mistake in 
refercTicc to that. In 1850, accoi'ding to my recollection, and I do not 
think I am mistaken, there was a convention in session in the city of Nash- 
ville which had for its avowed object the disruption and destruction of the 
American Union and Constitution. A convention was called in Cincin- 
nati for the purpose of denouncing — 

Several Voices. That is not so. 

Mr. Cox. I ask you simply whether you sustained the fugitive slave 
law? 

Mr. Bingham. I tell the gentleman that I did no such thing. 

Mr. Cox. I am satisfied with the gentleman's answer. 

Mr. Bingham. But will the gentleman do me the justice to permit 
me to state what I did do ? 

Mr. Cox. I ask you whether you did or not, at Cincinnati, at a 
Union meeting, make a speech sustaining the compromise measures of 
1850, including the fugitive slave law? 

Mr. Bingham. I did no such thing. 

Mr. Cox. '.rhen, sir, you are wrongly reported in the city papers. 

Mr. Bingham. And in the same city paper I am reported as dissent- 
ing openly and publicly in that speech to a resolution which declared that 
law constitutional ; and I dissent from it to-day as I did then. The speech 
to which I refer was very imperfectly reported in the papers. 

Mr. Cox. Oh ! that was it ! Do you agree with my distinguished 
friend [Mr. Corwin] in i-egard to its constitutionality? 

Mr. Bingham. I do not agree with him or any other man as to its 
being constitutional. 

Mr. Cox. Then, where are we to find any harmony in the Repub- 
lican party on this subject? 

Mr. Bingham. I answer by saying, that you will find no such har- 
mony in your own party. 

Mr. Cox. That is no answer, sir. Our distinguished friend [Mr. 
Corwin] who spoke to-day, says that he is the embodiment of that party ; 
and the gentleman here [Mr. Bingham] must be a rebel. I do not un- 
derstand where the head or the tail of the Republican party is. Is the 
gentleman [Mr. Coravin] the head or the tail? [Great laughter.] I 
think of it as the Irishman thought of the elephant — " there is sure a tail 
at both ends of the animal." [Great laughter.] 

Now, I ask my distinguished friend, who is the candidate for Speak- 
er [Mr. Siikrman], whether or not he believes in the constitutionality of 
the fugitive^slave law? I hope my friend Avill do me the courtesy to 
answer this question. It is a serious matter. It relates to one of the 
compromises of the Constitution ; one of the sacred compacts under 
which the Republic was organized, and without which it could not have 
been made and could not continue to exist. 



SEDITION EST THE NOKTH. 79 

Mr. Sherman. I decline, as I did the otlier day, to answer any in- 
terrof^atories. 

Mr. Cox. I did not hear my colleagtie. 

Mr. Sherman. I will repeat it ; I decline to answer the interroga- 
toiy of my colleague, as he knew I would ; and I will state to him, and to 
gentlemen on the other side of the Plouse, that I stand upon my public 
record. I do not expect the support of gentlemen on that side of the 
House, who have, for the last four years, been engaged in a series of 
measures, none of which I approve. I have no answers to give to them. 
[Applause and hisses.] 

Mr. Cox. I do not know Avhat contest is meant in which the gentle- 
man has so conspicuous a record. If it was in relation to slavery in the 
Territories, or the admission of new States, I do not think his record is 
so very definite upon that subject that he can treat my question so cava- 
lierly ; for when the State of Oregon came here with a constitution which 
was free and made by the people — free, and made so by enough of them, 
where was the record of the present candidate for Speaker then? Why, 
sir, when that vote Avas taken, or just before it was taken, when he had 
a chance to manifest his sympathy in favor of a free State on the Pacific, 
which vras knocking at the door for admission, how did he treat those 
noble Republicans who cry aloud for freedom in his State ? Why, by 
going precipitately out of yonder door. [Roars of laughter and applause.] 

Mr. Sherman. Did I understand my colleague to allude to me as 
evading a vote ? 

Mr. Cox. I saw the gentleman in the hall before the vote was 
taken — but a few moments before. 

Mr. Sherman. Upon what question ? 

Mr. Cox. The Oregon question. 

Mr. Sherman. Mr. Clerk, allow me to say to my colleague — 

Members on the Democratic side. Don't yield to him. lie declines 
to answer questions. 

Mr. Cox. I wiU hear my colleague. 

Mr. Sherman. I will say to my colleague that I never evade a vote. 
Uniformly upon all questions relating to the admission of Oregon, I voted 
against it. I was engaged at the time of the final vote on a special com- 
mittee of this House, and I went do^vn to the committee room with a 
gentleman on the other side. 

Mr. Cox. And yet every other member of your committee was here 
to vote at the time the vote was taken ! Mr. Clerk, the gentleman says 
he voted against the admission of Oregon in all its preliminary slages, 
but when it came to the cap-sheaf — when there was a fair opportunity of 
extending the last vote of welcome to the expected sister State — when 
there was chance to put the apex iipon freedom's pyramid — he was not 
there ! 

Now, I only Avish to expose the inconsistent, heterogeneous elements 
which make up this mosaic, called Republicanism in Ohio. What are 
they? Mr. Dennison, their candidate for Governor, as I have already 
said, Avas an old line Whig in 1850, was a General Scott elector in 
1852, and sustained the platform of the Whig party, which said the 
fugitive slave law and the compromise of 1850 were a finality. He 



80 EIGHT TEAES EST CONGRESS. 

changed round this year, and, by the aid of the distinguished gentleman 
who last spoke, was made Governor of Ohio, by the votes of the Western 
Reserve men to whom he bowed in the dust. By the letter I have 
quoted, you Avill see that he changed all his notions as to the fugitive slave 
act and the compromises of 1850. He hailed the infraction of the 
Constitution as justice ; he hailed the breaking of the law as liberty ; 
he hailed the rescuing of the law-breakers ar, humanity. And then he 
went out to the people and undertook to say to one portion that he was an 
old-line Whig, and to another he sang the Marseillaise Hymn with these 
Obcrlin gentlemen. Now, I propose to read the rest of his letter. I 
wish to show who was the candidate sustained by these national Republi- 
cans from Ohio, including the gentleman [Mr. Coewin]. He said further : 

"And in the contest between the antagonisms of freedom and slavery, forced upon us 
by the southern ohgarchy and its northern allies, we may at all times prove ourselves 
worthy descendants of the heroic founders of the Republic, who declared one of the great 
purposes of the Federal Constitution to be the securing to themselves and their posterity 
'the blessings of liberty.' Accept the assurance of my sincere regard personally, and 
my uncompromising hostility to slavery and despotism in every form." 

Well now, sir, what further took place at the meeting to which this 
letter was addressed? Why, I will tell you. Mr. Giddings, whose sen- 
timents were the natural antecedents and causes of the Harper's Ferry 
affair, dismissed that convention of ten thousand with a benediction, and 
they all came down to the city of Columbus, black and white, to find out 
whether or not the Supreme Court Avould decide adversely to the constitu- 
tionality of the fugitive slave law. They thought they had it all right. 
Judge Swan's time was nearly out. They thought they would hold this 
abohtion rod from Cleveland over him. But, before I go further upon 
this point, allow me to say that Governor Chase was at that meeting in 
Cleveland, but he did not counsel exactly as my distinguished friend [Mr. 
Corwin] has said he did. He did not counsel them to fight this matter at 
the ballot-box altogether. He got up in that meeting of disorganizers and 
revolutionists with their Marseillaise Hymn, and their cries and shrieks of 
" Down with the fugitive slave law !" and he laid his hand upon his heart, 
or that particular part of his anatomy where his heart is supposed to re- 
side [applause and hisses], and he said : 

" Some of the most respected citizens of the State, whom he had known for years, had 
done what they believed to be right, and which not one man in ten thousand would look 
up into the blue sky, with his hand on his heart, and say was not right." 

" This case has been brought before the courts of the State, and they are bound to 
carry out their duty under such a view of it. If the process for the release of any prison- 
er should issue from the courts of the State, he was free to say that so long as Ohio was a 
sovereign State, that process should be executed." 

He promised that if the Supreme Court of Ohio, at Columbus, should 
decide that law to be unconstitutional, as he thought it was unconstitu^ 
tional, tliat for one, as chief magistrate and commander-in-chief of the 
forces of our State, he would see that that nullification was made effective, 
even to the shedding of the blood of our citizens. [Laughter from the 
Republican side.] Yes, sir, let them laugh over it. It is nevertheless 
true, that tlicy came down to Columbus, with some of your Harper's Fer- 
ry cutthroats among them, armed, to break down the laws of the United 
States, with pistols and knives — black men and white men — to despoil the 



• SEDITION IN THE NOETD. 81 

State of Ohio of its fair reputation as one of the faithful States of this 
Confederacy. 

Well, it happened that tliey reckoned Avithout their liost. Judge Swan 
delivered the opinion of the majority of the cou]-t. Though he had been a 
Republican, and had received eighty thousand majority on their ticket in 
1854, he held that for sixty years the law of 1793 had been upon the 
statute book, acquiesced in and sustained, and that the law of 1850, 
amending it, had been, by the same authority, sustained by the Supreme 
Courts of Massachusetts, of Rhode IsUmd, of Pennsylvania, of Indiana, 
and of California, and by the Supreme Court of Ohio on the circuit ; and 
that the Wisconsin case, if properly examined, was no exception to the 
general rule, which decided that the act of 1793 and its amendment of 
1850 were constitutional acts. Here is the exact lanfnia"-e : 

o o 

"Whatever differences of opinion may now exist in the public mind, as to the power 
of Congress to punish rescuers, as provided in the acts of 1793 and 1850, no sucli vital 
blow is given cither to constitutional rights or State sovereignty by Congress thus enact- 
ing a law to punish a violation of the Constitution of the United States as to demand of 
this court the organization of resistance. If, after more than sixty years of acquiescence, 
by all departments of the national and State governments, in the power of Congress to 
provide for the punishment of rescuers of escaped slaves, that power is to be disregarded, 
and all laws which may be passed by Congress on this subject from henceforth are to be 
persistently resisted and nullified, the work of revolution should not be begun by the 
conservators of the public peace." 

And, as a fit and eloquent climax to his decision, he used this expres- 
sion, as neai'ly as I can give it : 

" As a citizen, I would not deliberately violate the Constitution or the law by interfer- 
ence with fugitives from service. But if a weary, frightened slave should appeal to ipe to 
protect him from his pursuers, it is possible I might momentarily forget my allegiance to 
the law and Constitution, and give him a covert from those who were on his track ; there 
are, no doubt, many slaveholders who would thus follow the instincts of human sympathy. 
And if I did it, and was prosecuted, condemned, and imprisoned, and brought by my 
counsel before this tribunal on a habeas corpus, and was then permitted to pronounce 
judgment in my own case, I trust I should have the moral courage to say, before God and 
the country, as I am now compelled to say, under the solemn duties of a judge, bound by 
my ofBcialoath to sustain the supremacy of the Constitution and the law: 'The prisoner 
must be remanded.' " 

That was the decision of our best judge in Ohio, our chief justice. He 
was a man of spotless integrity of character, who held the balance of jus- 
tice equipoised between high and low, rich and poor. He was learned, 
impartial, and decisive for the right. In all respects he was an upright 
judge. And for deciding thus, mark you, for being an impediment in the 
way of the ambition of our Republican Governor, for refusing to aid these 
higher-law fanatics of the Reserve, for refusing to serve under Joshua R. 
Giddings and his companions, who counselled that the United States 
officers should be shot down as pirates — for doing that, the Republican 
convention struck his name from the roll of judges as unfit to wear the 
ermine ! He was not pliant to tlie purposes of higher-law fanaticism ! 
And my colleague [Mr. Corwin] sustained the convention in this lawless 
proceeding. I know that in the campaign which followed he preached 
strong and well against these disorganizers ; but I never could under- 
stand why he took the stand-point he did, from which to hurl his thunders 
6 



82 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGKESS. j 

against the ordcrless miscreants of oui* State. There was one party where 
he might have done it with consistency. 

When the Repubhcan convention voted, as he confesses they did, and 
voted unanimously, that the fugitive slave law was " subversive of both 
the rights of the States and the liberties of the people, and contrary to 
the plainest duties of humanity and justice, and abhorrent to the moral 
sense of the civilized world," and when they demanded its repeal, where, 
I submit to him, does it place him before the country? He admitted, in 
reply to my question, tha tas one of Mr. Fillmore's Cabinet he approved ' 
of that law ; he thinks it constitutional ; he will not repeal it. Yet he 
contented himself Avith voting against it in committee. He allowed it to 
pass the convention without dissent. He supported the candidates who 
were associated with its most solemn declaration, and who accepted nomi- 
nations from the same convention. And yet further, he went forth to 
battle in the State against the very platform and for the very candidates 
thus placed before the people. Am I not right, then, in saying that there 
was no other mode by which he could be consistent and national, except 
by coming over to the Democratic organization, and fighting with them 
for the integrity of the laws and of the Constitution ? 

That there may be no mistake, let me refer to the resolution of the - 
Republicans of Ohio : 

" 3. Hesolved, That proclaiming our determination rigidly to respect the constitutional 
obligations imposed upon the State by the Federal compact, we maintain the union of the 
States, the rights of the States, and the liberties of the people ; and, in order to attain 
these important ends, we demand the repeal of the fugitive slave act of 1850, as it is sub- 
versive of both the rights of the States and the liberties of the people, and as contrary to 
the plainest duties of humanity and justice, and abhorrent to the moral sense of the civil- 
ized world." 

Now, what explanation does the gentleman give us of this remarkable 
resolution? He tells us that there was a clause in it, when before the 
committee, " that the fugitive slave law was unconstitutional, and that it 
was stricken out before reported." Ay, sir, that was the compromise 
that was made in the committee. After striking that out to please the 
weaker wing, then to please the dominant abolition wing they go right 
into the convention and strike down the man who had decided it to be 
constitutional. Is not this a much more emphatic condemnation of that 
law as unconstitutional, than any resolution? If I had time, I would 
weary the House with the evidence from Republican journals and leaders, 
showing that Judge Svran was thus immolated, and because of that very 
decision. The selection of his competitor, Judge Gholson, was not from 
convenience of locality. It was because he was recommended as a prac- 
tical Abolitionist, who had freed his slaves in Mississippi. 

Well, Mr. Clerk, I might pursue this matter further. I have heard 
my friend here [Mr. Corwin] make appeals to the patriotic, the order- 
loving, the law-abiding people of our State and of my own city. The 
very night after the convention was held, I heard him make a speech in 
Columbus. I happened to be in the audience among some of the gentle- 
men from the Reserve while he was speaking, and many of them thought 
— and gave expression to their thoughts — that he Avas making a Demo- 
cratic speech. [Much laughter.] I heard a gentleman in my neighbor- 



SEDITION m THE NORTH. 83 

hood say that he beh'eved the pro-slavery men had " yanked Governor 
Cor\.m right reound" on this question, and that " his speech was no 
better than one of your cursed Locofoco speeches." [Roars of laughter.] 

Now, you see the position of this Ohio Republican party. 1 venture 
the assertion that if we could poll the members of the Ohio delegation 
on the bther side of the House, we should tind them, perhaps, equally 
divided on this momentous question on which the union of the States is 
founded, and without which it never could have been made. I think that 
perhaps my friend on the right [Mr. Corwin] would be in a minority if 
he were to poll the delegation. He shakes his head. How do you think 
it stands ? You have how many members ? 

Mr. Vallandigham. Fifteen. 

Mr. Cox. You have fifteen members of the delegation. Did you 
ever poll them ? No ? You do not know how they stand upon this ques- 
tion. Well, my impression is that you are in a minority, and if you do 
want to hold a class-meeting some time, as you said, and will call in your 
Democratic brethren, we will take the sense or the census of the meeting. 
[Great laughter.] 

I was gratified, Mr. Clerk, to hear our friend here give us a little dia- 
lectics on the subject of the higher law. I would have been glad if it had 
been delivered in Ohio — in Cleveland — before the Harper's Ferry foray 
took place, before the disunion meeting there the other day. Perhaps he 
did deliver it. I know he did deliver some portions of it. But Mr. 
Wendell Phillips, Avhom he denounces here so eloquently, is, as I claim, 
in his logic and in his philosophy, the very exponent of tlie Republican 
theoiy and doctriiie ; and I will show you how I will prove it. He holds 
to the idea of individual sovereignty. 

A Member. Squatter sovereignty? 

Mr. Cox. No, sir ; not squatter sovereignty, nor territorial sover- 
eignty, nor congressional sovereignty. He opposes congressional sover- 
eignty, as Republicans oppose it, unless it prohibits slavery. He opposes 
popular sovereignty aU the time, as Republicans do ; and I will show you 
Avherein he agrees with the Republican party in its philosophy. He says 
that there can be no civil society unless every individual member of it 
bows to its authority. He says that Governor Wise had no more right 
to hang John Bro\vn than John Brown had to hang Governor Wise. In 
his opinion, the State of Virginia is no more than a piratical crew. He 
says that there can be no majority, no minority. Any thing which comes 
into opposition with his convictions must go down before those convictions, 
not excepting even the Constitution and laws of the country. Herein he 
is in harmony with the dominant segment of the Republican party. That 
is the doctrine of Governor Chase, applied to the Territories. My dis- 
tinguished friend [Mr. Corvs^in] shakes his head. I will tell him where 
he will find it. He will find it in his message of January, 1857, where 
he says that he believes that the right of property in man cannot be 
created by any civil government ; that there is no power in any organized 
civil community to create the relation of master and slave ; that no ma- 
jority in a Territory, while such, or when it frames a State constitution, 
can create the relation of master and slave. He would hold that each 
individual has the right for himself to decide all these questions pertain- 



84: EIGHT TEARS m CONGKESS. 

ing to personal liberty, any law to the contrary notwithstanding. Is not 
this the Republican doctrine ? Hence Governor Chase is logical when he 
says that Congress may prohibit slavery, but that it has no power to 
establish it. He would be logical, if he said that the people of a Terri- 
tory, by majority, might prohibit slavery, but have no power to establish 
it. That is the legitimate consequence of this individual sovereignty 
preached by your Wendell Phillipses. If it has not been avowed by my 
honorable friend, at least he has indorsed the indorser of it. He says : 
"Never!" Why, in Columbus one year ago — I have the paper here — 
you paid your attention to my district. There you shook hands Avitli 
Governor Chase, on Goodale Park platform — did you not ? You said that 
you had voted for him, and had stood by him. Do you not remember 
how facetiously you remarked on your own countenance ? You had fur- 
nished your complexion to the party, and he the colored principle. [Great 
laughter.] I remember. Don't you remember how cordially you em- 
braced? You shake your head again. Pardon me. I do not mean a 
bodily embrace — no, by no manner of means ; but you had a most affec- 
tionate political hug before the people of Ohio ! [Renewed laughter.] 
What, then, did the gentleman indorse in Governor Chase ? He indorsed 
the individual sovereignty of Wendell Phillips, as applied by Governor 
Chase to civil society and the institution of slavery in the Territories. It 
is the same doctrine that these fanatics have. They have a great family 
of isms. You can tell them all by their hereditary marks of insanity. 
[Laughter.] Read in the Tribune the enunciation of free-love. Stephen 
Pearl Andrews comes out — and mark how his logic suits Mr. Wendell 
Phillips, Governor Chase, and the whole Republican party. Stephen 
Pearl Andrews says that he is for individual sovereigTity, not in reference 
to slavery in the Territories, but in reference to the affectional nature. 
[Laughter.] He is opposed to any affinity with any man or woman who 
does not come uj) squarely to the idea of free-love, unrestrained by the 
marriage relation or civil authority. He says : " What ! Bring your 
law to bear upon me ; enact that I shall live in a state of marriage under 
the civil law, against my passional attractions? What ! Compel my sis- 
ter to keep, against her will, with her old husband ? No, I am for liberty, 
God and liberty ! " — which means the Devil and free lust. So they go 
on, and so these individual sovereigns run through the catalogue, from 
one end to the other. They are aU tied together by the same string of 
isms Avhich our friend here has so eloquently and inconsistently de- 
nounced. 

Nov/, Mr. Clerk, the time for the Republican party to have denounced 
these dangerous doctrines, was not after the Harper's Ferry aifau' had 
occasioned so much dissatisfaction, anxiety, apprehension, and dismay in 
the South. The time to have denounced them was when Mr. Giddings 
made his speech here in favor of servile insurrection. The time to have 
denounced them was when Helper came along with his book ; when Gov- 
ernor Seward said that there was a higher law than the Constitution 
which required the extermination of slavery, and " that you and I must 
do it." Then was the time for denunciation, and not after John Brown, 
wrought upon by the everlasting rub-a-dub of the abolition drum, got to- 
gether his recruits, crept into the valley of the Blue Ridge, collected his 



SEDITION IN THK NOKTH. 85 

$10,000 worth of rifles and pikes, and in the night, when no premonition 
had been given, when all was hushed — 

Mr. Miles. On Sabbath. 

Mr. Cox. Yes, sir, when there was no sound to disturb the quiet 
but the church-going bell, took possession of an armory with one hun- 
dred thousand stand of arms, imprisoned inoffensive citizens, and killed 
others. Why did you not denounce these doctrines in the bud ? Why 
did you not stop the bloody instructions of which this is the fruit ? Wliy 
were they not denounced from the pulpit, forum, and rostrum? Why 
not denounced from these seats in Congress? You come up at this late 
day and say, " Oh ! we do not approve of this thing. The people of the 
free States do not approve of it." Neither do they. My friend [Mr. 
Corwin] was right when he said that the people of Ohio, outside of the 
Western Reserve, are not in favor of insurrection and dissolution. I 
think that the Reserve ought to be cut off and slid over to Canada, for 
which it has more affinity than for the United States. [Laughter.] 

Mr. HuTCHiNS. Why, then, cut off a part of the Union ? 

Mr. Cox. I am sure that our people would be glad to change those 
counties of the Western Reserve for Cuba and cheap sugar and molasses. 
[Great applause and laughter.] My friend is a correct exponent of the 
sentiment in Ohio in reference to this insurrection. I am glad he has re- 
ferred to it in the way he has. I will add my testimony — feeble as it is 
— to the testimony of the gentleman, to convince the South that these ma- 
rauders and murderers have no sympathy with the mass of the people of 
that State, from which most of them seem to have come, and within whose 
borders they concocted their fell designs. It is due to the gentlemen of 
the South who have shown so much apprehension on this subject, to say 
that at least one hundred and seventy-one thousand two hundred and sixty- 
six Democratic voters of Ohio put their seal of disapprobation on all the 
men connected either by sentiment or act with tliis matter. [Applause in 
the galleries.] That was the vote last year ; and if it were properly rep- 
resented in this Hall, instead of six Democratic members only, we would 
now have ten. From the sentiment of this year, four of these Republican 
gentlemen would be compelled to bid adieu to this scene of congressional 
Hfe. 

But the distinguished gentleman who preceded me [Mr. Corwin] says, 
and says ti'uly, that there is no sentiment in the southern part of our State, 
at least in that part of the State which he and I represent, which would 
not disapprove, in toto, of the men who have, preached and acted out this 
servile insurrection. There is no sentiment in that part of Ohio which 
does not at once and forever protest against that horrible spectre of history 
— a servile insurrection. I may go further and do justice to the RepubK- 
can vote of Ohio this year. It was one hundred and eighty-four thousand 
five hundred and two ; more than half that number, sir, in my judgment, 
thoroughly condemn this raid upon Virginia. While I admit the sentiment 
is different in the Reserve and at Cleveland ; while I admit that the noisy 
leaders and blatant journalists who undertake to manage and do control 
the Republican party in its platform and candidates, are not blessed with 
the same genuine spirit, I freely and willingly bear my testimony to the 
public execration which in Ohio has followed the insurgents at Harper's 
Ferry, their aiders and abettors. Let me go further. 



86 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

When you come to the great Northwest you find one million one hun- 
dred and sixty-two thousand voters in her seven States. This is a hun- 
dred thousand more than all the voters in the South, one-third of the whole 
Union, and three times as many as New England. I believe, sir, that 
more than one-half of these votes will be cast in 1860 for the Democratic 
party, for the rights of the States and the permanence of Federal concord. 
You will find these voters warm in favor of the Union, and the Constitu- 
tion, which is the only ligament which holds that Union together. You 
will find this attachment not merely in our party, but among the very men 
who voted for my friend [Mr. Coewin] and many of the Republicans upon 
this floor. Look to the great Northwest, and to its power as it is now, 
and as it will be. She has a lake and river tonnage of four hundred thou- 
sand tons, and five thousand miles of river and lake coast. She has, and 
must have ever, the Mississippi River as her outlet. Has she nothing at 
stake? She will be able to protect herself and the Union besides. In 
18G0 she Avill have as many Representatives upon this floor as the Avhole 
South will then have, and three members to one from New England. You 
will find in her a conservative element which will say to the North, with 
its extremists, and to the South, with its extremists, " Thus far shalt thou 
go, and no further ; hei"e shall the waves of disunion be stayed ! " You 
will find in the Northwest a conservative element, which, if we have the 
Cincinnati platform unaltered, will rise up to the support of the Demo- 
cratic party, as the only safe repository of that constitutional power by' 
which this Government is to be carried on. 

It is said by men of science that the least disturbance of the law of 
gravitation in the universe will not only disturb the stars in their courses, 
but that it will change the position of the lightest flower upon the face of the 
earth. So it is with respect to that political gravitation by which the 
States are held in their spheres as they revolve around the Federal centre. 
Not only will the disturbance of our Confederation and Constitution, and 
the laws made in pursuance of it, in the least particular, whether by re- 
sistance to law or by riotous insurrection, disturb the relation of the vari- 
ous States, but it will disturb that concord of feeling in each individual 
citizen which is the flower of our patriotism — without which the Consti- 
tution and the Union cannot be preserved. Without fraternity of feeling 
that Constitution is a dead letter — a mere wisp of straw — a rope of sand. 
There is a sentiment in the Northwest which cannot and will not listen to 
a disunion sentimeut. 

I regret to hear upon this side of the Chamber the dissolution of the 
Union spoken of as a contingency. I wish to say in behalf of the na- 
tional Democrats of Ohio, that with them there is no such word as that 
rung in our ears by Southern gentlemen — "dissolution of the Union per 
se." We know of no dissolution per se. We have no dead or living lan- 
guage to phrase such sentiments. We are for the Constitution and for the 
Union. We have no language to express any thing with respect to break- 
ing those ties, ao eloquently depicted by my friend [Mr. Coewin], which 
bind us together. Those ties are as old as the Constitvition, I am pre- 
pared, as the gentleman from New York [Mr, John Cocheane] said the 
other day, to sail over many a stormy sea in the protection of that Union 
and Constitution. If I have read aright the history of the formation of 



SEDITION IN THE NOETH. 87 

the Constitution, its framers had troubles and trials far more vexatious 
and arduous than those we have undergone in preserving it. It was 
as long as from March to September, 1787, before they could agree 
upon an instrument, and before it could go out to the States for their rati- 
fication. They quarrelled about the slave trade ; they quarrelled about 
the three-fifths representation of slaves in making up this body ; and it 
was not until such patriotic appeals were made as we have heard 'here by 
gentlemen upon this side of the Chamber, that they could come together 
and agree upon this common Constitution. Too many of their descend- 
ants are too quick to listen to the cry of disunion. We of the Northwest 
have no aifmity with any one who utters that cry, whether from the 
North or South. 

I remember an incident that occurred in the late Sepoy rebellion in 
India — a servile insurrection, which miglit have found more than its 
counterpart, if the late affair at Harper's Ferry had been consummated as 
it was designed. You remember that Lucknow was besieged for months 
by those fiends in human shape, who did what Brown would have had the 
negroes of Vh'ginia do. Death stared the beleaguered garrison in the face. 
The engineers even gave up hope. A day, and all would be lost ! A 
fever-stricken Scotch lassie, overcome with fatigue, lay upon the ground, 
wrapped in her plaid and slumber. Suddenly she gave a cry of joy. Her 
delirium passed aAvay. She exclaimed: " Dinna ye hear it? Dinna 
ye hear it? Ay, I am no dreamin'. It's the slogan of the Highland- 
ers. We're saved ! We're saved ! " The young girl had a keen ear for 
her national music. She was from the Highlands — the home of the Mac- 
Gregors and the Douglas ! The duller ear of the Lowlanders did not catch 
the inspiring strain. I think, sir, I may be pardoned for saying that we 
of the Northwest have a quicker ear for the music of the Union. Through 
the noise of strife and the cannonade of insurrection, and while other 
sections have dulled their sense by too frequent allusions and reflections 
upon disunion, there remains in the Northwest the ready love, the unself- 
ish devotion, and the patriotic zeal which is quick to hail the music of 
the Union as the harbinger of our safety and repose ! [Applaixse from 
the galleries.] 



NORTHERN DISUNIONISTS AGAIN. 

EXPULSION OF A JIEIIEER. THE KEPUBLICANS ARRAIGNED FOR TDEIR INCITISM. 

On the 9th of April, 1864, the Speaker, Colfax, offered a resolution to 
expel jVIi". Long, of Ohio. Without any knowledge or expectation of such 
a movement, Mr. Cox took the floor after the Speaker, and said : 

I approach this matter with becoming seriousness. The extraordinary 
spectacle is presented of our Speaker descending from the chair to make a 
motion to expel one of the members of this House for words spoken in 
debate. The occasion calls for more than the usual gravity of delibera- 
tion. I was no»i present when my colleague [Mr. Long] made the re- 



88 EIGHT TEAES EST CONGRESS. 

marks wliich have called ovTt this resolution. I am told by members 
around me that his remarks do not bear the interpretation given to them, 
by the speech and resolution of the honorable Speaker. Before a resolu- 
tion of this startling nature was introduced, we should have had the official 
report of those remarks in the Globe. If action be demanded for the ex- 
pulsion of a Representative of the people, for the exercise of his constitu- 
tional right of free debate, we should have the most avithentic record of 
that debate. As I am informed, the language of my colleague was so 
quahfied as to make it far less objectionable than the statement of it in 
the resolution. Still, sir, it may be obnoxious, and yet there may be no 
just ground for this proceeding of expulsion. 

Had I been in my seat yesterday, with all due respect to my colleague, 
I should have promptly risen and disavowed, on behalf of all the delegation 
from Ohio with whom I have conversed, any sentiments uttered by him 
or any one else, looking to the recognition of the Confederate Government 
as an independent Power. So far as I can learn, there is not a member 
acting with this side of the House, unless it be my colleague, who is not 
opposed in every conceivable view, directly or indu'ectly, to such recog- 
nition.* 

I speak earnestly and consciously of this, because an attempt w^as 
made yesterday to make partisan capital for the other side out of the 
speech of my colleague. But it should be borne in mind that he said that 
he spoke only for himself, and not for his part3^ He was frank, true, and 
honest in that avowal. He did not speak, nor propose to speak, for his 
party. He did not speak for his Democratic colleagues. 

Very recently we have had a convention of the Democratic people of 
Ohio, representing over one hundred and eighty-five thousand voters. In 
that convention, sir, no sentiments were uttered, and none would have 
been tolerated, like those to which exception has been taken. On the con- 
trary, the only person whose name was presented to that convention as a 
delegate to the Democratic national convention, who avowed sentiments 
looking toward the recognition of the Confederate States, and who printed 
a learned and able pamphlet to circulate among the members of the con- 
vention, in exposition of his views, received but a few votes among several 
hundred in that convention ; showing that the Democrats of Ohio, for 

* As Mr. Pendleton afterwcards called this remark in question, I republish the follow- 
ing card : 

"House of Eepeesentattves, I 
Washington, D. C, May 20. J 

" On the evening after Mr. Long delivered his speech, the undersigned members of the 
Democratic delegation in Congress from Ohio, consulted with such of their coUeagues as 
they could meet, in reference to the propriety of protesting against the sentiments ex- 
pressed by Mr. Long, ' that the alternative was now presented between subjugation and 
annihilation, or recognition.' The following named persons concurred in protesting 
against the doctrine of recognition, viz. : Messrs. Bliss, Noblk, Hutchins, Johnston, Lb 
Blond, J. W. White, Morris, Finck, O'Neil, Cox, and McKinney. The other members 
were not seen. Those who were not consulted, agreed to meet in caucus next morning 
before the meeting of Congress, to agree upon the form of protest. Seven met, and be- 
fore the otlicrs came to the place of meeting or any action was had, the ywere notified 
that a resolution was introduced to expel Mr. Long, whereupon they repaired to the 
Elouse, and Sir. McKinney informed Mr. Cox (who was not at the meeting) of the agree- 
ment of the eleven members above mentioned. J. F. McKinney, 

Geo. Bliss." 



SEDITION m THE NORTH. 89 

whom I si^eak, are not prepared in any shape, however plausible, to ac- 
cept the disintegrating doctrine to which this resolution refers. On the 
contrary, the Democratic people of that State, when the war came, which 
they endeavored but failed to avert, rallied to the defence of this Govern- 
ment. They sustained it in every emergency. We, the members upon 
this side of the House, had and yet have our brothers and our friends in 
the Army doing battle for the Republic, although they do not agree with 
the peculiar African policies pursued by this Administration. 

I refer to the position of the Ohio Democracy with pride, because of 
the imputations thrown upon tliem by my colleague [Mr. Gakfield]. 
He followed the speech of my colleague from the second district [Mr. 
Long], and strove to make political points for his party, not by misrep- 
resenting him so much as by misrepresenting the Democracy. 

Now, I propose to show that if the sentiments attributed to my colleague 
are unpatriotic and treasonable, the prominent men of the Republican party 
are amenable, for similar sentiments, to the same condemnation. There 
is scarcely a leading member of the opposite party, from the Executive 
down, who is not committed in doctrine, if not in pi'actice, to the separation 
of these States. I shall show that members opposite deserve expulsion 
by the same rule Avhicli they would mete out to my colleague. 

I pass over for the present the sacred, constitutional right of free de- 
bate in this Chamber of American Representatives, and proceed to show 
that this resolution comes Avith a bad grace from that quarter in which so 
much sedition and revolution have been expressed and acted. 

And first, I desire to ask of the Speaker if he had forgotten when he 
penned this resolution, that in the last Congress a most acute member of the 
Republican party, in good standing and sweet fellowship — Judge Conway, 
of Kansas — not only made a remarkable speech in favor of the recogni- 
tion of the South, but offered solemn resolutions affirming the heinous 
doctrine. If the honorable Speaker has forgotten the fact, let him turn to 
the Journal of the House of December 15, 1862, page 69, and he will find 
the following resolutions ofiered by Mr. Conway. I quote such of them 
as bear on the points in discussion : 

"Resolved, That freedom and slavery cannot coexist in the same Government without 
producing enclless strife and civil war ; that ' a house divided against itself cannot stand ; ' 
and that ' this nation must be all free or all slave.' 

'■'■Resolved, That the American Union consists of those States which are now loyal to 
the Federal Constitution. 

'■'■Resolved, That the restoration of the Union as it existed prior to the rebellion would 
be a greater calamity than the rebellion itself, since it would give new life to the ' irrepres- 
sible conflict,' and entail upon the nation another cycle of bitter contention and civil war. 

" Resolved, That the seceded States can only be put down, if at all, by being regarded 
as out of constitutional relations with the Union, and by being assailed upon principles of 
ordinary warfare as between separate nations. 

" Resolved, That it is a matter for serious reflection whether another election of Presi- 
dent must not supervene before the rightful authority of the nation can be established ; 
and whether in the mean time it is not a flagrant waste of our energies to continue the war. 

" Resolved, That unless the Army of the West shall have swept through the valley of 
the Mississippi to its mouth, and the Army of the Potomac annihilated the legions of Lee 
anif JacksoD, thus subverting the military power of the rebellion within a reasonable 
time, the best interests of the country and humanity will require a cessation of hostilities. 

"Resolved, That the States of the North composmg the American nation, and wielding 
its power, must ever remain one and indivisible on the basis of freedom for all, without 



90 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

distinction of race, color, or condition ; that their mission must ever be to extend their 
own civiUzation over the entire continent ; and that whatever derangements, difficulties, 
checks, or defeats they may encounter, they must forever cherish and pursue the inspiring 
idea of nationality and continental dominion." 

From ■\vliicli it will appear that, after affirming tlie irrepressible con- 
flict, it was resolved that the American Union consisted only of those 
States which are now loyal to the Federal Constitution ; that the restora- 
tion of the old Union would be a greater calamity than the rebellion itself; 
that the seceded States should be regarded as out of constitutional relations 
with the Union ; that until the election of another President it was a 
flagrant waste of our energies to continue the war. Does the honorable 
Speaker remember that those resolutions recognized that only the States 
North composed the American Union ? If he did, why did not this sensi- 
tive gentleman [Mr. ColfaxJ, who was not then in the chair but upon 
the floor, come forward with a resolution for the expulsion of his friend 
Mr. Conway? I ask the Speaker to respond to that question. Why 
did you not do it, sir? Is such a resolution fair toward a member on this 
side and unfair toward a member on the other? You were for free speech 
and free resolution then ; I am for it now as then. Why do you pursue 
my colleague to disgrace him, when you did not lisp a word about expel- 
ling one from your own ranks who was in favor of disparting the old 
Union and recognizing the nationality of the Southern confederacy ? The 
Speaker does not, for he cannot, answer. I will yield to him to respond. 

Mr. Colfax. The gentleman from Indiana claims the floor whenever 
he sees fit to claim it, and declines speaking in the midst of the speech of 
the gentleman from Ohio. 

Mr. Cox. The gentleman is distinguished as well for his prudence as 
for his sagacity. 

Mr. Allison. I desire to ask the gentleman from Ohio if he believes 
that Mr. Conway ought to have been expelled from the last Congress un- 
der the circumstances. 

Several Mebibeks. Oh, that is not the question. 

Mr. Cox. When the gentleman on the other side answers my ques- 
tion, I will answer him. I will do it any how. I do not think that he 
should have been expelled any more than we should expel the distinguished 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] for his speech in favor of re- 
garding the Confederacy as a de facto government, and that war should be 
carried on against it, according to the law of nations, as an independent 
Power established by its arms and recognized by the nations. The mem- 
ber from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], if I remember his speech on that 
subject, quoted Vattel in favor of his policy, which he predicated upon the 
idea of the independence of the southern government. Ay, and my col- 
league [Mr. Garfield], who is a fair debater generally, has taken the 
same ground as the gentleman from Pennsylvania, holding that an insur- 
rection as formidable as this requires the laws of war to be applied as 
between two distinct and independent sovereignties. The men who hold 
that doctrine are not the men to expel another member who holds to the 
same doctrine. 

Mr. Garfield. Will my colleague yield to me for a moment ? 

Mr. Cox. With great pleasure. I would not do my colleague any 
injustice. 



SEDITION IN THE NOETH. 91 

Mr. Garfield. My colleague does do me injustice in what he has 
just uttered. If he will do me the honor to read my speech on confisca- 
tion, on this particular he will find that I take most decisive ground against 
the position of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and therein deny in toto 
the doctrine that these are a foreign people. On the contrary, I therein 
claim that they are in the Union, and that all the obligations of the Con- 
stitution overhang them. But in putting down this rebellion wc have 
been told by the Supreme Court that we are to pursue them by the laws 
of war, the same as the laws between foreign nations, but not thereby ad- 
mitting that they are a foreign nation. 

Mr. Cox. Well, I cannot understand that distinction, but I accept it ; 
and then I ask my colleague, if he holds that the Confederacy is not an 
independent nation, and if he thus antagonizes the position of the gentle- 
man from Pennsylvania, why he is not in favor of expelling that gentle- 
man for holding that doctrine and avowing it openly ? Did I understand 
that my colleague does not follow the leader of his party in this House 
upon this doctrine ? I pause if my colleague will favor me with a reply. 

Mr. GrAKFiELD. I draw a most marked and broad distinction be- 
tween the opinion of the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania and 
the opinions of my colleague from the second district [Mr. Long]. The 
gentleman from Pennsylvania is in favor of prosecuting the war to the 
uttermost to bring back these revolted States. The member from the 
second district of Ohio is opposed, in the first place, to all further prose- , 
cution of the war ; in the second place, he holds that all compromise is 
impossible ; and in the third place, he declares openly in favor of throw- 
ing up tlie white flag and acknowledging that they have conquered us and 
are independent, and that we will call back our armies and make no at- 
tempt, either by conference or by war, to restore the Union. There is 
the difference. 

Mr. TuATER. I wish to make a statement. I am sure the gentleman 
from Ohio will not object. 

Mr. Cox. I will yield to the gentleman one moment. 

Mr. Thayer. I simply wish to remind the gentleman from Ohio 
that my colleague to whom he has referred [Mr. Stevens] is not in his 
seat, being detained therefrom by sickness. I think, therefore, it is^ better 
not to indulge in these remarks in regard to him in his absence. 

Mr. Cox. Oh I Mr. Speaker, the remarks of the distinguished gen- 
tleman from Pennsylvania are as well known as his great capacity. They 
are printed. I will do him no injustice, but quote them here : 

"It is, however, essential to ascertain what relation the seceded States bear to the 
United States, that we may know how to deal with them in reestablishing the national 
Govermnent. There seems to be great confusion of ideas and diversity of opinion on that 
subject. Some think that those States are still in the Union and entitled to the protection 
of the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that they, notwithstanding all they 
have done, may at any tune, without any legislation, come back, send Senators and Repre- 
sentatives to Congress, and enjoy all the privileges and immunities of loyal members of the 
United States. That whenever those ' wayward sisters ' choose to abandon their frivoli- 
ties and present themselves at the door of the Union and demand admission, we must re- 
ceive them with open arms, and throw over them the protecting shield of the Union, of 
which it is said they had never ceased to be members. Others hold that, having com- 
mitted treason, renounced their allegiance to the Union, discarded its Constitution and 
laws, organized a distinct and hostile Government, and by force of arms having risen from 



93 EIGHT YEAES EST CONGEESS. 

the condition of insurgents to the position of an independent Power de facto, and having | 
been acknowledged as a belligerent both by foreign nations and our own Government, the ' 
Constitution and laws of theUuion are abrogated so far as they are concerned, and that, 
as between the two belligerents, they are under the laws of war and the laws of nations 
alone, and that whichever Power conquers may treat the vanquished as conquered prov- 
inces, and may impose upon them such conditions and laws as it may deem best." 

Again he says : 

" Is the present contest to be regarded as a public war, and to be governed by the 
rules of civilized warfare, or only as a domestic insurrection, to be suppressed by criminal 
prosecutions before the courts of the country ? " 

I need not tell the House how the member from Pennsylvania answered 
this question. He founded upon it his argument in favor of confiscation 
by the laws of nations and of war. He quoted from Judge Grier to 
prove the war a public war, and not a domestic insurrection. He con- 
structed an argument to show that this was not a contest with individu- 
als, but with States, known under the name of the " Confederate States." 
He held it to be idle to regard individuals as making war. " War is 
made," said he, " by chartered or corporate communities, by nations or 
States." 

"When an insurrection becomes sufficiently formidable to entitle the party to belliger- 
ent rights, it places the contending Powers on precisely the same footing as foreign na- 
tions at war with each other." * * * "j^q one acquainted with the magnitude of 
this contest can deny to it the character of a dvil war. For nearly three years the Con- 
, federate States have maintained their declaration of independence by force of arms." * * 
"What, then, is the effect of this pubhc war between these belligerent, these foreign no- 
Lions ? Before this war the parties were bound together by a compact, by a treaty called 
a ' Constitution.' They acknowledged the validity of municipal laws mutually binding on 
each. This war has cut asunder all these Hgaments, abrogated all the obligations." 

" What, then, is the effect of this public war, between these belligerent, 
these foreign nations ? " Foreign nations ! Foreign ? Why ? Because 
not under our Constitution, but alien from it by the maintenance of their 
independence by force of arms. Nations? Having all the autonomy 
and independence of a belligerent Power in Europe. Yet for these sen- 
timents, who had the courage to question, censure, or propose to expel 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania? Ah ! he is a Republican, and has a 
dispensation from the higher powers to recognize by his logic (which my 
colleague unhappily followed) the existence of the South as a separate 
nation. He is the leader of that side of the House, and may debate 
without question these momentous issues. My colleague followed him in 
his premises, although he drew another conclusion. 

Now, I ask my colleague [Mr. Gaefield] whether he did not vote 
for a gentleman in Ohio for Lieutenant-Governor who held the same 
doctrine of recognizing the southern confederacy? I refer to Lieutenant- 
Governor Stanton, who announced that doctrine on this floor. He never 
was expelled for it. No one sought then to abridge his free debate. I 
heard his remarks. I will send them up to be read before my colleague 
answers the question. 

Mr. Garfield. If the gentleman will allow me, they can as well be 
read afterwards. 

Mr. Cox. Let them be read now. 

The Clerk read as follows : 



SEDITION IN THE NOETH. 93 

"Mr. Speaker, whcu there were fifteen slavebolding States acknowledging allegiance to 
the Federal Government, and therefore, having in their hands the power to protect them- 
selves against any invasion of tlieir rights on the part of the Federal Government, it was 
a matter of very httlo consequence whether such an amendment as that was incorporated 
in the Constitution or not. But the state of the country is now radically and essentially 
changed. Seven or eight States now deny their allegiance to this Government, have or- 
ganized a separate confederacy, and have declared their independence of this Govern- 
ment. Whether that independence is to be maintained or not is with the future. If they 
shall maintain their position, and sustain the authorities there for a year or two to come, 
so as to show that nothing but a war of subjugation and conquest can bring them back, 
I, for one, am disposed to recognize that independence." — Congressional Globe., February 
23, ISul, page 1285. 

Mr. Cox. I will now yield to my colleague to say wlietlier he did 
not vote for that man as Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, after it was known 
throughout the State that he thus favored the independence of this con- 
federacy? ~ 

Mr. Gaefield. I answer my colleague that I did not vote for that 
gentleman nor for any candidate on the ticket that fall, for the simple 
reason that I was in the army. If I had been in Ohio, I should have voted 
for that gentleman, and I do not excuse myself on any other ground than 
the simple lack of being present at the time of the election. 

Now, allow me to say that there was a large class of men on both 
sides of the political questions of that day who in the beginning of this 
war felt a doubt whether it was not better to let these people alone for a 
time, hoping that reason might return to them by delay. There were others 
who said " Ave cannot leave them alone ;" and to that class belonged a 
number of distinguished gentlemen in the parties on both sides. That is 
one thing. But now, after that question has been adjudicated, after the 
great American people have determined on war and determined on putting 
down the rebellion, after three years of war have passed, and when we 
are almost in the hour of daylight and victory, to arise now and throw 
up the contest is treason. 

Mr. Cox. Mr. Speaker, I only asked the gentleman to answer my 
question, not to go ofl' into a definition of what is treason in his judgment. 
I would rather take the constitutional definition of treason. I do not 
think my friend takes the Constittition as his authority, for he has said 
twice on this floor that he would overleap that Constitution. When you 
talk of treason, and in the same breath talk of overleaping the Constitu- 
tion, you are the traitor, if there be such a traitor in this House. 

Mr. Garfield. Will the gentleman tell me what question it is that 
he desires I shall answer? 

Mr. Cox. I do not ask the gentleman any more questions. I am 
satisfied Avith his position. It is enough that I have shown that he is not 
the man to vote for the expulsion of any member for expressing sentiments 
in favor of the recognition of this southern confederacy. It is not for him 
who Avould have voted for a man who was in favor, in advance of war, of 
the recognition of the southern confederacy, and who thus encouraged 
the rebels to proceed in their rebellion Avhen it was in its bud, to reflect 
upon gentlemen on this side of the House who have voted against seces- 
sion, against recognition, and in favor of sustaining the Avar for the Union 
upon the proper policy. It is not for him to censure or expel my col- 
league, AA^hen he has declared that he himself would in some cases over- 
leap the Constitution. 



94 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

Mr. Garfield. I only desire to say that my colleague misrepresents 
me, I presume unintentionally, when he says that I have on two distinct 
occasions declared my readiness to overleap the Constitution. That I 
may set myself and him right on that question, I will say, once for all, 
that I have never uttered such a sentiment. What I have uttered is this : 
When asked if I would, under any circumstances, override the Constitution, 
I said this, and this only — premising, as I believed, that the Constitution 
was ample enough of itself to put down this rebellion, that its powers were 
most capacious, and there was no need to override it — that if such a time 
ever should come that the powers of the Constitution were not sufficient 
to sustain the Union, if that impossible supposition should ever prove true 
[laughter from the Democratic side of the House], then I Avould say that 
we have a right to do our solemn duty under God, and go beyond the 
Constitution to save the creators of the Constitution. 

Mr. Cox. I am informed by the members around me, and tl^e re- 
port of my colleague's remarks in the Globe will show, that he put no con- 
dition like that which he makes now. I ask gentlemen on both sides, 
whether my colleague ever qualified his remarks by saying, that it would 
be forever impossible in the future for the Constitution to be infringed by 
making war. Why make the statement of overleaping the Constitution, 
if it be forever impossible to do it in carrying on this war ? 

Mr. Gakfield. WUl the gentleman allow me ? 

Mr. Cox. Certainly. 

Mr. Garfield. I said so in answer to the question of my colleague 
now upon the floor. I said so, secondly, in answer to the gentleman from 
Illinois, and put the same question to him. I explained it in the same 
v/ay. The gentleman is at liberty to look at the manuscript, which I have 
not yet seen, and may quote from it. 

Mr. Cox. I have only the Chronicle's report of the debate of yester- 
day. Perhaps it is good authority for the members on the other side. I 
will quote from its report : 

"Mr. Garfield then controverted his colleague's position. The issue was now made 
up. We should use the common weapons of war. If with these we should not succeed, 
he would take means, as he would against the savage who attacked himself or family. 
He would resort to any element of destruction, and, if necessary, he would fling all con- 
stitutional sanctions to the winds rather than lose his country." 

There is nothing about the impossibility of the Constitution pi-oving 
insufficient to put down the rebellion, and in which case alone he would 
overleap it. Overleap an impossibility ! I would like to see the per- 
formance. 

Another question. I remember that my colleag-ue, on the confiscation 
bUl, said that he would under certain circumstances overleap the Constitu- 
tion. AVhat did he mean then by that ? In that debate his language was 
precisely this : 

"I would not break the Constitution at all, unless it should become necessary to over- 
leap its barriers to save the Government and the Union." 

Nothing about the impossibility of ever breaking the Constitution, not 
a word or syllable, for he contemplates its breach for certain purposes. 
My colleague cannot escape from the dilemma in which he is placed. 
And yet he undertakes to make political capital out of the speech of my 



SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 95 

colleague from the second district, after sucli declarations ! If he does not, 
gentlemen on that side of the House do. They are, I learn, subscribing 
for that speech by hundreds and thousands to distribute it for partisan 
purposes ; and yet they have advocated the very heresies upon which they 
ground the present accusation, and give them circulation by sending out 
the speech of my colleague. I want it understood that the Republican 
members who have favored recognition, and favored the men who favored 
it, are now striving to expel a member for the same license of speech 
which they have indulged ; that at home they have favored for high offices 
a public character who took ground in favor of recognizing the rebellion 
if it should maintain itself " for a year or two." I might well ask my 
colleague, in view of his position, whether he did not know what were 
the sentiments of Governor Stanton, when he would have voted for him 
if he had been at home ? To come to the question : was he not thus com- 
mitted to the policy of dissolving the Union, if the rebellion could sus- 
tain itself for a year or two ? Then I ask him, how much better is he 
than the member whom he seeks to expel? Wherein does he difler from 
that member upon this subject of recognizing lawlessness? More than 
that ; the Republicans elected a man Senator from Ohio who had uttered 
the same sentiments, as the sentiments of that party. He is the per- 
sonal and political friend of my colleague. I mean Senator Wade. I 
will send his remarks to the Clerk's desk to be read, that we may know 
who are in favor of dissolution and recognition. 

The Clerk read as follows, from the Congressional Globe of the third 
session of the Thirty-fourth Congress, page 25 : 

"But southern gentlemen stand here, and, in almost all their speeches, speak of the 
dissolution of the Union as an element of every argument, as though it were a peculiar 
condescension on their part that they permitted the Union to stand at all. If they do not 
feel interested in upholding this Union, if it really trenches on their rights, if it endangers 
their institutions to such an extent that they cannot feci secure under it, if their interests 
are violently assailed by means of this Union, I am not one of those who expect that 
they will long continue under it. / am not one of those who mould ask them to continue 
in such a Union. It ivould be doing violence to the platform of the party to which I be- 
long. We have adopted the old Declaration of Independence as the basis of our political 
movement, which declares that any people, when their Government ceases to protect their 
rights, when it is so subverted from the true purposes of government as to oppress them, 
have the right to recur to fundamental principles, and, if need be, to destroy the Govern- 
ment under which the;/ live, and to erect on ife ruins another more coyidueive to their wel- 
fare. I hold that they have this right. I will not blame any people for exercising it, 
whenever they think the contingency has come. You cannot forcibly hold nun mi this 
Union ; for the attempt to do so, it seems to me, would subvert the first principles of the 
Government under which we live." 

Mr. Cox. Now, there is the broadest doctrine laid down in favor of 
the right of revohition and against the right of coercion. " It would be 
doing violence to the platform of the party to which I belong," says the 
Republican leader of Ohio, " to ask the South to continue in such a 
Union." " You cannot forcibly hold men in this Union ; it would subvert 
the first principles of the Government." Ah ! you reelected him Senator 
after those avowals, and now would you expel men for the same avowals? 
If they are treason in a Representative, what are they in a Senator ? I 
ask my colleague if he did not sustain that Senator? Did he not vote 
for him for Senator, or Avould he not have voted for him? 



96 EIGHT TEAE8 IN CONGRESS. 

Mr. Gaepield. I had not the pleasure of voting for the distinguished 
Senator from Nortliern Ohio, but it would have given me great pleasure, 
and had I had that privilege I should have enjoyed it and acted upon it. 

Mr. Cox. Does the gentleman approve of Senator Wade's doctrine? 

Mr. Gaefield. Will the gentleman allow me a moment? 

Mr. Cox. AVith great pleasure. 

Mr. Garfield. I wish to send to the desk, to be read — 

[Cries of "No!" "No!"] 

Mr. Cox. If it does not come out of my time I will not object. 
[Cries of " Well ! " " Well ! " and " No ! " " No ! "] 

Mr. Gakfield. I recall the paper. 

Mr. Cox. Will the gentleman indicate what it is ? 

Mr. Garfield. I will only say in reference to this colloquy, that if I 
cannot make my part of the colloquy as I choose, I avUI make it when 
the gentleman has concluded his remarks. 

Mr. Cox. The gentleman can have the paper read if he pleases. I 
shrink from no responsibility in this debate. 

Mr. Garfield. I desire to have read an authority which the gentle- 
man himself, I think, acknowledges. It is upon the same point that has 
just been in debate between us, and when it is read I have only a word 
to say. ~" 

Mr. Cox. Who is the authority ? 

Mr. Garfield. Thomas Jefferson. 

The Clerk then read as follows : 

Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to J. B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, says : 

"The question you propose, whether circumstances do not sometimes occur which 
make it a duty in officers of high trust to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of 
sohitiou in principle, )3ut sometimes embarrassing in practice. A strict observance of the 
written laws is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but it is not the 
highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in dan- 
ger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written 
law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are en- 
joying them with us ; thus absolutely sacrificing the end to the means." — Jefferson's 
Worics, vol. 5, p. 542. 

Mr. Garfield. I have only to state that that paper states, more ably 
and more eloquently than I can, the very doctrine which I have uttered, 
and for which the gentleman condemns me. 

Mr. Cox. Now, I do not know as to the authenticity of that quota- 
tion presented by the gentleman ; but if the gentleman quotes it for the 
purpose of vindicating the lawlessness against the United States authori- 
ties which has been rampant in that part of Ohio where he lives, just as it - 
was prevalent in South Carolina, I doubt if Jefferson would have sanc- 
tioned sucli a pernicious and disorganizing practice. I know the gentle- 
man and his party are in favor of a higher law than the Constitution, or 
the laws made in pursuance thereof, when, in their opinion, those laws 
impinge upon their consciences. But I deny all such seditious and anar- 
chical doctrine. Notwithstanding every authority, whether it be from 
Jefferson, Wade, or my colleagite, I deny utterly the right of any one, se- 
cessionist or abolitionist, to infract or nullify any law of the United States 
or any clause of its Constitution, for any purpose. I am in favor of the 
enforcement of the laws everywhere equally upon every citizen of the 



SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 97 

United States. But my colleagup takes the other ground, and quotes Jef- 
ferson to sustain it. But with such a lawless programme how can he 
vote for the expulsion of my friend from Ohio because, as it is alleged, he 
maintained the same principle? How can a defender of law-breakers 
expel another for recognizing the breach of the very fundamental law of 
the Union ? 

But I asked my colleague a question to which he did not respond. It 
was whether he was in favor of the sentiments of Senator Wade in refer- 
ence to the right of revolution and against coercion. He said he would 
have voted for liim. Where does that place my colleague ? In the cate- 
gory of my friend from Cincinnati, according to the allegation. How, 
then, can my colleague vote for tlie expulsion of a man who agrees with 
him and with his Senator ; and who agrees with auother and the principal 
light of the Republican party ? Horace Greeley in his paper states Avhat I 
will send to the Clerk to be read for the information of the gentleman. 

The Clerk read the following from the New York Tribune of the 2d 
of March, 18G1 : 

"We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied 
by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, that Governments derive their just 
povcers from the consent of the governed, is sound and just ; and that, if the slave States, 
the cotton States, or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, they have 
a moral right to do so /" 

Mr. Cox. Now, I ask my colleague whether he favors that doctrine 
of Horace Greeley ? He has been hitherto very prompt to answer. I 
have given him every chance. I ask my colleague whether he believes 
in that " moral right of the Gulf or cotton States to make an independent 
nation " ? 

Mr. Garfield. I am perfectly willing to answer the gentleman, if 
he will proceed with his own remarks, and I can then get the floor. I 
would prefer to answer him categorically then. 

Mr. Cox. I will give the gentleman a chance to answer as I go 
along. It is so much more interesting. I like that dramatic and viva- 
cious form of debate. My colleague is so apt and ready in debate. 

Mr. Garfield. I prefer to wait until the gentleman is through. 

Mr. Cox. I am afraid people will draw a "wi'ong conclusion from my 
colleague's refusal to answer. He may not get a chance to answer to- 
day. But as he seems unwilling, I ask the privilege of printing a few 
more extracts from the great editorial light of his party, Mr. Greeley, in 
reference to letting the southern States go. Nobody ever attempted to 
expel him out of the Republican party for such sentiments. 

"If the cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union 
than in it, we insist on the letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a rev- 
olutionary one, but it exists nevertheless." » * * "We must ever resist the right 
of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw 
from the Uuion is quite another matter ; whenever a considerable section of our Union 
shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep 
it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to another by 
bayonets." — Tribune of November 9, 1860. 

" If the cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peacefully from the 
Union, we think they should and would be allowed to do so. Any attempt to compel 
them by force to remain would be contrary to the principles enunciated in the immortal 
7 



98 EIGHT YEAUS m CONGKESS. 

Declaration of Independence ; contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty 
is based." — Tribune, November 26, 1860. 

"If it (the Declaration of Independence) justified the secession from the British Em- 
pire of three million colonists in 1'7'76, we do not see why it would not justify the secession 
of five millions southrons from the Union in 1861." — Tribune, December 17, 1860. 

" Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of the southern people have become 
conclusively ahenated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best 
to forward their views." — Tribune, February 23, 1861. 

Can it be possible that sucb opinions have been uttered and the paper 
not suppressed? Can it be that members who read it approvingly, day 
by day, seek to expel a member of this House for copying its Avorst feat- 
ures ? Why was not the Constitution " overleaped " to suppress that jour- 
nal and exile its editor? Gentlemen opposite take this journal and swear 
by it as the gospel of emancipation and the exponent of Republican policy. 
They cannot get along without it. AVhy, then, are they so sensitive when 
it is alleged that a Democrat is going in the direction pointed out by their 
own shining beacon ? 

Mr. Speaker, I need not ask my colleague whether he voted for Abra- 
ham Lincoln for President. I know that so far as the past is concerned 
he is committed to Mr. Lincoln and to his record and sentiments. I pro- 
pose to have read, for the information of my colleague, an extract from a 
speech made by Mr. Lincoln, in Congress, on the 14th of February, 1848, 
and printed by Gideon & Co. especially for circulation among such gen- 
tlemen as my colleague. Here is the extract, and to it I solicit his atten- 
tion. I ask him if he approves of the doctrine. If he does, he cannot 
consistently vote for the expulsion of my colleague. The Clerk will read 
from the original and genuine document. 

The Clerk read as follows, from the pamphlet : 

" Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have a right to rise up 
and shake off the existing Government and form a new one that suits them better." 

Mr. Cox. I may be allowed, before the Clerk reads any further, to 
call the attention of the distinguished Speaker to that extract. He voted 
for Mr. Lincoln. Nobody knows whether he is for him or not now. 
[Laughter.] I want to ask him whether he approves of the doctrine. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

" This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to 
liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an 
existing Government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such a people that can, 
may revolutionize and may make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit. 
More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting 
down a minority intermingled with or near about them who ipay oppose their move- 
ments." 

Mr. Cox. I get no response from the Speaker. He must approve of 
the revolutionary sentiments of the President, and be disgusted Avith his 
own resolution of expulsion. Perhaps he will move to lay his resolution 
upon the table, or else vote to impeach Mr. Lincoln. 

Mr. Colfax. In reply to the remarks of the gentleman from Ohio, 
I have to repeat that the gentleman from Indiana upon this side of the 
House does not speak in the midst of another gentleman's speech by his 
courtesy, liable to be stopped by him as the gentleman stopped his col- 



SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 99 

league recently. He speaks when he obtains the floor, and has no secret 
about his opinions in regard to any subject. 

Mr. Cox. Oh ! Mr. Speaker, when the leading man of this Hduse 
comes down from his high position to offer a resolution to expel a mem- 
ber who comes here by the same right that he does, he cannot escape on 
account of his peculiar dignity. When he descends to this floor, the com- 
mon platform of us all, and condescends to mingle with us in debate, he 
cannot and shall not escape. Is he or is he not in favor of the doctrine 
laid down by the President in the extracts which have been read ? That 
is a very simple question. You will lose no dignity, sir, by answering it 
now. [Laughter.] We will^look upon you with pride and pleasure as 
the Speaker of this House, if you will condescend to delight us by evincing 
your opinion upon that subject. I pledge myself that you shall not be inter- 
rupted. 

Mr. Colfax. In reply only to the personal remarks of the gentleman 
from Ohio, I say this to him : that when I appear upon this floor, I do 
not condescend from that chair. The position of a member upon this floor 
is as exalted and responsible as the position of him who sits in that chair 
to administer your ruleti. The gentleman brings a reproach upon himself 
and upon his fellow-members upon this floor when he sneers at me and 
speaks of me, when I appear upon this floor as the representative of my 
constituents, performing my duty, as condescending. The highest position 
a man can hold in this House is that of a representative of one hundred 
and fifty thousand people, sent here by their willing votes, and not by a 
mere majority of votes elected here as the presiding officer of this body. 

Mr. Cox. Mr. Speaker, I did not make any personal remarks in re- 
gard to my distinguished friend. Far be it from me to throw any stain 
upon him for his condescension. I admire him too much for his fairness 
and justice in presiding over our deliberations to reproach him. Never 
has he heard a word of that kind from me. But when he comes doAvn 
from his exaltation to this floor and undertakes to engineer a resolution 
thi'ough this House for the expulsion of a brother member, he must take 
the consequences of the debate which he inaugurates. 

Mr. Colfax. I am willing to do so, perfectly willing. 

Mr. Cox. My friend does not seem now to be willing to do it. He 
shall not be interrupted if he answers, whether he stands by Mr. Lincoln 
or not in the sentiments which I read from his speech. I am opposed to 
all such sentiments, opposed to secession, opposed to revolution, and op- 
posed to any change of our Government, except in pursuance of the Con- 
stitution, by the amendment (hereof. That is the position of the mem- 
bers on this side. But Mr. Lincoln was elevated to the Presidency by 
that lawless party on the other side, knowing his sentiments to be in favor 
of secession and revolution, in favor of " any portion of the people that 
can, revolutionizing and making their own so much of the territory as 
they inhabit." I ask gentleman, if my colleague deserves expulsion, does 
not the President deserve impeachment? 

But if gentlemen say these questions are gone by, then I come to the 
condition of things since the war, and press the question which was not 
answered, why did you not expel Mr. Conway last Congress ? I receive 
no reply. I now ask, why not expel the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Ju- 



100 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGEESS. 

lian], the colleague of the Speaker, for his speech on the homestead law, 
wherein he expressed sentiments which, if carried out, would bring about 
in the North the very convulsion and anarchy which we now unhappily 
have in the South. The gentleman from Indiana, on the 18th of March, 
1864, held these sentiments : 

" Congress must repeal the joint resolution of last year which protects the fee of rebel 
landholders. The President, as I am well advised, now stands ready to join us in such 
action. Should we fail to do this, the courts must so interpret the joint resolution as to 
make its repeal needless. Should both Congress and the courts stand in the way of the 
nation's life, then ' the red lightning of the people's wrath ' must consume the recreant 
men who refuse to execute the popular will. Our country, united and free, must be saved, 
at whatever hazard or cost ; and nothing, not even me Constitution, must be allowed to 
hold back the uplifted arm of the Government in blasting the power of the rebels 
forever^'' 

Now, Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House, in our simplicity, 
were taught last session of Congress by a patriotic and learned member 
of the opposite party from Massachusetts [Judge Thomas], that there 
coidd be no Union without the Constitution ; that there could be no war 
carried on except in pursuance of the Constitution ; that in using the ap- 
pliances for subduing the rebellion we are acting within the pale of the 
Constitution ; that we seek domestic tranquillity alone by the sword the 
Constitution has placed in our hands ; that in the path of war, as of peace, 
the Constitution is our guide and our light, the cloud by day, the pillar of 
fire by night ; that in preserving the Union and the Constitu.tion Ave vin- 
dicate in every part the indivisible Republic in its supreme law ; that in 
seeking to change the Constitution, to break or overleap it, we become the 
rebels we are striving to subdue ; that all our labors and sacrifices for the 
Union of our fathers are for the Constitution, which is its only bond ; that 
to make this a war, with a sword in the one hand to defend the Constitution, 
and a hammer in the other hand to break it to pieces, is no less treasona- 
ble than secession itself; and that outside of the pale of the Constitution 
the whole struggle is revolutionary. 

If these sentiments be true, sir, and no one will question them, why 
was not the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Julian] expelled for the treason- 
able sentiments I have quoted ? Why was not a similar resolution to this 
moved in relation to him ? We on this side do not do it. We are in favor 
of the largest liberty of debate by Representatives. We understand that 
the Constitution guarantees such debate. We did not disturb your Judge 
Conway last session for his resolutions. We did not vote for his resolu- 
tions ; but you are responsible for his continuance in his position till the 
end of the last Congress. 

If it were a reproach to the country, as our distinguished Speaker 
has stated, that a man should express himself here in favor of the recog- 
nition of the Southei'u Confederacy ; if it dishonors and weakens us 
abroad and impairs our energies and discotirages our efforts at home ; if 
it were equivalent to allowing members of the Richmond congress to 
come here and take part in our deliberations (as the Speaker has al- 
leged), why was not the expulsion of the member from Kansas proposed 
by him? Ah ! his case was of a different hue then. It was of a darker 
shade then. Now you are in favor of expelling a man from our midst 
who was sent here by the people, because he utters the same sentiments 



SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 101 

which this side repudiates, and which one of your own side uttered last 
session, and which you never sought to repudiate by the grave process of 
expulsion. 

But the Speaker did not resume his seat until he had made a fling at 
the Democracy of my State for supporting Mr. Vallandigham. Mr. 
Speaker, I took some part in the last contest for the Governorship of 
Ohio. I did not fully agree with the gentleman who is now in exile, as 
members know, in his votes on this floor, nor in regard to his peculiar 
views of policy or peace. I upheld sadly but firmly the sword, after it had 
been unsheathed, lest a worse alternative shovdd ensue — the disunion of 
our beloved country. 

Mr. Julian. WiU the gentleman yield to me for a moment ? 

Mr. Cox. Certainly. 

Mr. Julian. The gentleman from Ohio read only a portion of a 
paragraph from the speech Avhich t delivered in this House, and I wish he 
would allow me to have read at the desk the entire paragraph which I 
have marked. 

Mr. Cox. I will insert in my speech what the gentleman desires, but 
as the extension of my time is objected to, I cannot yield to him. The 
gentleman does not deny that I have quoted him fairly so far as I have 
gone. Did not the gentleman say that he was in favor of breaking down 
the Constitution to save the country ? 

Mr. Julian. It is a perversion of what I did say. 

Mr. Cox. I would rather have it from your own lips than from any 
report. Are you in favor of breaking down the Constitution? 

Mr. Julian. I will answer the gentleman from Ohio. I said ex- 
plicitly in the paragraph of my speech which I have asked the gentleman 
to allow to be read, that there was no necessity in the woi'ld for breaking 
down the Constitution in any of its parts to put down the present rebellion 
in the South. That is my position. I said the Constitution was made 
for the people, not the people for the Constitution ; and that our fathers 
were not fools but wise men, who armed the nation with the power to 
crush its foes as well as to protect its friends. 

Mr. Cox. If that necessity existed ? 

Mr. Julian. If it were necessary to save the life of the nation to 
depart from the letter of the Constitution, I would, as I said in my speech, 
blast the power of the rebellion forev6r by the strong hand of war. 

Mr. Cox. I, too, would blast the power of the rebels by the strong 
hand of war ; but I regard the life of the nation as bound up with the 
Constitution, and that to blast the Constitution you blast the Government, 
And by destroying the Constitution you do not put an end to this war nor 
suppress the rebellion. 

Mr. Julian. I ask the gentleman Avhether, if the salvation of the 
nation's life required the violation of the letter of the Constitution, the 
gentleman would be willing to save the life of the nation at that cost ? 

Mr. Cox. I regard it as utterly impossible, under God, ever to save 
the life of the nation by tearing out its vitals, its heart and brain. The 
Constitution is the frame in which the Government is enshrined. I know 
no other Government except that embodied in the Constitution. This is 
the Government which you are sworn to support ; not sworn to support. 



102 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

sir, in a certain emergency ; not sworn to destroy, if necessary to save 
the life of the country, but unconditionally to support at all times and in 
all places, as if that life were bound up with it forever. You have taken 
upon your soul the oath to sustain that Constitution. Now you say on 
certain conditions you would break your oath ! What is moral treason? 
Wliat is moral perjury ? I do not charge these upon the gentleman ; but 
I beg him to reconsider and call back his words. 

Mr. Julian. Will the gentleman yield to me right here ? 

Mr. Cox. I will, if the gentleman thinks I have done him injustice. 

Mr. Julian. I have taken that oath, and I have asserted publicly that 
there is no necessity in the world for violating it. But the gentleman has 
not answered the interrogatory which I propounded to him. I wish him 
to state explicitly Avhether, if the life of the nation could only be saved by 
a violation of the Constitution, he would be willing to save it in that way. 
[Laughter on the Republican side of the House.] 

Mr. Cox. I will answer the question. I am used to laughter from 
that side of the House. It does not distract me, for laughter is not logic. 
What is the life of the nation, sir, of which we hear so much? I know 
no other life of the nation except that incarnate in the written Constitu- 
tion, which protects property, person, home, conscience, liberty, and life. 
Take away these, and there is no nation. Society is stagnant and dead. 
The gentleman regards liberty as the life of the nation, a sort of ill-defined 
liberty for black and white, I suppose. I regard the Constitution as the 
embodiment of constitutional freedom in this country, the very body, life, 
and soul of the Union. That is the Constitution of the United States. 
When you strike that down you strike down the life of the nation. There- 
fore we, on this side, have determined, in order to save the life of the 
Government, to save the Constitution from destruction. 

Mr. Julian. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him another 
question ? 

Mr. Cox. If the gentleman is not fully answered, I will say this, 

THAT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES CONCEIVABLE BY THE HUMAN MIND WOULD 
I EVER VIOLATE THAT CONSTITUTION FOR ANY PURPOSE. [CrieS of 

" That's it ! " " That's it ! " from the Democratic side of the House.] 
As Judge Thomas has said, " I would cling to it as the bond of unity in 
the past, as the only practical bond of union in the future ; the only land 
lifted above the waters, on which the ark of the Union can be moored. 
From that ark alone will go out the dove, blessed of the Spirit, which 
shall return bringing in its mouth the olive-branch of peace." To com- 
pass its destruction as a probable or possible necessity, is the very gospel 
of anarchy, the philosophy of dissolution. 

I^ there be any man in this chamber who holds or utters any other 
sentiment in reference to the Constitution and his oath than this which I 
have expressed, I say to him, that language has no term of reproach, and 
the mind no idea of detestation, adequate to express the moral leprosy 
and treason couched in his language and clinging to his soul. I will not 
designate such utterances by any harsher language in a parliamentary 
body. 

When interrupted by the member from Indiana, I was about to go a 
little further in answer to what the Speaker said in reference to the De- 



SEDITION IN THE NOETH. 103 

mocracy of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I took a part in the campaign of last 
year, as I said, not because I approved of the peculiar peace notions of 
my former colleague. It was Avell known in Ohio, that my votes here did not 
always coincide with his, and that ray sentiments did not agree with his 
altogether ; but when by an arbitrary arrest, without warrant, without a 
fair trial, in defiance of the Constitution, in defiance of a law pass3d by 
ourselves, in defiance of English and American traditions, pe*;itions, and 
bills of right, he was arrested and exiled, the Democracy of Ohio raised 
an issue in favor of fair trial, free speech, the immunities of personal free- 
dom, and an honest and lawful administration of public affairs. That was 
our only issue. I took ground everywhere in favor of the liberty of the 
citizen and the integrity of the Constitution. Disagreeing always with 
the peculiar tenets held by him in relation to coercion, I held that he had 
the same right to speak for peace as the soldier to fight for it. But I will 
say this for him, that nowhere, here or at home, did he ever utter a sen- 
timent or do an act looking to the recognition of the southern confederacy. 
He said in his place in this House, again and again, and quoted Mr. Cal- 
houn's opinions on the Mexican war in his justification, that he would 
not oppose the voting of men and money to carry on this war, the responsi- 
bility for whicli he did not covet nor bear. But, sir, he never would con- 
sent to a peace based upon recognition. He so said in the North, and he 
said the same in his exile in the South. 

We were defeated in Ohio on account of the issue made on the peace 
sentiment. I bowed to that decision. But, sir, while there are some in 
our party opposed to coercion and in favor of a peace indiscriminately, 
without ^regard to consequences, the great body of the Democratic people 
in our State and in the North have never gone beyond one conclusion ; 
and that is, they are forever opposed to curtailing the limits of our em- 
pire by the recognition of a nev/ nation carved out of our territory and 
made up of our States and people. Come war, come peace, come any 
thing, we would bring about a restoration of the old Government, with 
the old order. Our detei'mination is to superadd to force the policy of 
conciliation ; not to withdraw our forces from the field and yield to the 
South independence, but to superadd one other element of union — kind- 
ness and Christianity. If gentlemen cannot understand how two such 
ideas are compatible in the same mind with each other and with patriotism, 
I cannot teach them. While we have been ever ready to sustain our 
gallant soldiers in the field by our money and our men, we have been also 
ready at every hour of our triumph and at every opportunity for compro- 
mise, to extend an honorable amnesty to the erring ; not the jugglery of 
the executive amnesty, based upon a proclamation of abolition which is a 
lie, but an amnesty which shall bring back the great body of the people 
South, if it be yet possible, to their allegiance. We desire to make om' 
victories consequential by the rehabilitation of the States as they were, and 
to make out of th'em, and not out of illegitimate States, the old Union, one 
and indivisible ! 

This is the policy of the northern Democracy. We accept as our 
platform the integrity of the Union. Upon that platform we will never, 
in any emergency of this Republic, yield up this country and its Constitu- 
tion to secession, and to its baleful counterpart, abolition. " Amid all the 



104 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGKESS. 

darkness, the thick darkness around us, we will cling to the single, simple 
sublime issue — the Constitution, and the Union of which it is the bond ; 
the old Union. God bless the old Union, and the wrath of the Lamb of 
God shrivel to their very sockets the arms lifted to destroy it ; not in ven- 
geance, but in mercy to them and to all mankind." 

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW ITS REPEAL RIGHT OP ASTLU3I. 

On the 13th of June, 1864, this bill furnished the last opportunity of 
arraigning the Republicans for their violations of law ; but as the discus- 
sion has lost its interest, that portion of the speech is omitted. It was 
mostly an argument ad hominem against the members from Wisconsin 
and Ohio, who sustained the infraction of the fugitive slave law. Some- 
thing of a colloquy occurred between Messrs. Baldwin, of Massachusetts, 
and Blaine, of Maine, and the Speaker, as to the execution of the law 
in time of war and on black soldiers. The occasion was seized by Mr. 
Cox to vindicate the right of asylum, outraged in the case of Arguelles. 

arguelles' case. 

Mr. Cox said : I cannot understand why these gentlemen would de- 
stroy the only method of carrying out this extradition system of our Con- 
stitution ; and yet the other day, when a Spanish subject was arrested by 
our authorities, and taken from our shores which he sought as an asylum, 
these gentlemen sustained such extraordinary action. Against the Con- 
stitution, without law, without treaty, without evidence, without juiy trial, 
without warrant, without information, by executive power, usurping the 
treaty power, usurping the law-making power, usurping the power of the 
judiciary, this Administration delivered to Spain a white refugee ; and 
this Congress, with cringing obsequiousness, bowed before executive dic- 
tation, and by their legislative action said, " All right, Mr. President, you 
can seize a white man and take him from the country in defiance of the 
great right of asylum ; but when a black man, escaping from one State to 
another, and whom we are commanded by the Constitution to deliver up, 
and under the sanction of our oath to make laws for such delivery, we 
break down the constitutional clause and the laws sanctioned by the ju- 
diciary in order to create in the North an asylum for the blacks of the 
South." When a white man from another nation is torn away, and the 
practice and usage of all free and civilized nations is outraged, gentlemen 
on that side stifle proper resolutions of condemnation. 

Mr. Morris, of New York. The gentleman will allow me to ask 
him a question for information. In the case referred to by the gentleman 
from Ohio, Avas the man charged with crime or was he not? 

Mr. Cox. I say to my friend from New York that that white man 
was charged with a crime in newspapers, by clamor, but not legally. 
There Avas no charge, no warrant, no information, and no trial. I defy 
'gentlemen to give me a resolution of inquiry, to ascertain whether the 
Executive or the Secretary of State had any thing in writing but the request 



SEDITION IN THE NORTH. 105 

of the Spanisli minister upon wliicli to base the arrest and extradition of 
this Spaniard, seeking an asyhim in this country. Upon the request of 
Senor Tassara, the Spanish minister, Mr. Seward issued his rescript, and 
the man was taken from the privacy of his own room, without the knowl- 
edge of his wife, who was in the next chamber. He was hurried on board 
a steamer, was hurried off to Havana, and is there hehl as a criminal to 
be tried. And yet gentlemen upon the other side dare not condemn that. 
Why? Because it was alleged that he was engaged in some way in the 
slave trade. Well, some one with less sense than sensibility may cry out, 
" Oil ! you are the defender of the slave trade and slave traders." There 
is only one answer to this : the monosyllabic answer, " Pshaw." I de- 
fend no crime when I defend the right of asylum ; nor do I defend sla- 
very, when I oppose the repeal of a constitutional law for the rendition 
of slaves. 

It has been said that this Spanish subject, Colonel Arguelles, was en- 
gaged in the slave trade, and hence an enemy of the human race. The 
truth is that he was not engaged in that trade. Slaves had been landed 
in the district of Colon, in Cuba, under his jurisdiction, and those slaves, 
as it was alleged, he had sold after they were landed and confiscated, and 
having made money out of the transaction in violation of his duty he had 
fled to this country. There was no proof of all this. It was the only 
allegation, however, and it may be true. Suppose it were. The charge 
is simply that of a breach of the municipal law of Spain. He is not, 
then, in the legal sense, as Mr. Seward asserted, an enemy of the human 
race. He was not a pirate in any legal or moral sense, but a criminal 
under the laws of Spain. Pie could only be delivered to Spain under a 
treaty or a statute, and neither existed between this country and Spain. 
Yet gentlemen who are becoming so careful about the personal liberty of 
black men as to refuse to render them up in pursuance of the Constitu- 
tion, sustain the extradition of a white man without evidence, law, treaty, 
or constitutional authority. If there wei'e a treaty between Spain and 
the United States similar to this authority in our Constitution with regard 
to the rendition of black fugitives, no indignation would ever have been 
hurled by a hospitable people, proud of their system of asylum under our 
once free Government, against its present perfidious administrators. Upon 
the same principle, or want of principle, by which the Executive gave up 
this Spaniard, they would have surrendered Thomas Francis Meagher, a 
criminal convicted by the judicial tyranny of England, Professor Agas- 
siz, the savant, whom the world delights to honor, and every other man 
of gi'eat or little note -who comes here from abroad. 

We have had many humiliations since the present Administration came 
into power. We have bowed humbly before the throne of the French 
usurper, at the beck of an arrogant foreign minister, and allowed an Aus- 
trian prince and an imperial dupe to bear a crown from Europe to our 
continent, and sway a sceptre over a democratic republic with which we 
were in friendly alliance. We have had domestic humiliations by the 
forcible abduction, imprisonment, and exile of our citizens without law or 
trial. We have had our very thoughts pinioned, our presses manacled, 
and our Avrits of right and liberty annulled. For all these we place our 
hands upon our mouths in shame ; but for this last humiliation, by which 



106 EIGHT TEAT^S EST CONGRESS. 

America is no longer the home of the oppressed or the refuge of the for- 
eif^ner, by which we are made the hissing and byword of the nations, wo 
cast our mouths in the dust in abjectest degradation. We are put to cruel 
shame before all civilized nations, nay, before even half-civilized nations. 

Turkey once protected the Hungarian patriot, Kossuth ; Switzerland 
protects all political refugees in the midst of Europe, and stands there in 
her Republican simplicity and faith as firm as her everlasting mountains 
against the oppressions around her. We ])rotected the half-made citizen 
Koszta in an Asiatic harbor, and rescued him from an Austrian ship ; but 
this was when we had a Democrat to represent vis in our foreign affairs 
like William L. Marcy. But while this national Congress stops in the 
midst of a great civil war to sow new dissensions in our midst by unwise 
legislation like this for black fugitives, it has shown its servile timidity 
before the usurpations of our Executive, and has allowed the lettre de cachet 
of the French monarch to be reissued under the great seal of the United 
States, without a murmur of dissent or denunciation. We are disgraced 
before the world by the violation of the great feature of our system of 
polity. What new humiliation is in store for us ? 

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that I am not travelling out of the range of proper 
discussion by referring to this matter of the extradition of a foreigner with- 
out treaty or law. I have considered it fully. I hope before Congress 
adjourns that the Committee on the Judiciary will report a bill for the 
pui-posc of punishing such officers as dare lay their hands upon refugees 
who are here from countries with which we have no treaty, and in cases 
where there is no law for their delivery. Such refugees have the right to 
shoot down tlie officers who thus arrest them, and be entirely innocent of 
crime. Refugees under such circumstances vrould have the right to sue 
Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, or the marshal of New York, for false impris- 
onment, because of the absence of all law and all treaty in relation to that 
subject. 

What inference do I draw from this ? That in my opinion, as to all 
matters of rendition, whether of fugitives from service or justice, or of 
political refugees, there is always some law required to carry out in good 
faith the treaty or agreement upon those subjects. Hence, as between 
these United States, we had placed here in this second section of the fourth 
article of the Constitution, that any person charged with treason, felony, 
or other crime, fleeing from one State to another, should be delivered up, 
and Congress passed a law to carry that out. For the purpose of deliver- 
ing up persons accused of crime in one State and fleeing to another, papers 
are prepared, a prima facie case is made out, and a quasi trial is had. 
These are indispensable to executive action among our States. So in re- 
gard to fugitives from labor, the same preliminaries are required. Proof, 
a hearing before the commissioner, and Avarrants for the delivery of 
the fugitive to the claimant — these prerequisites are a part of a system as 
to all renditions. 

It is laid down in every authority on international law, and by states- 
men who have had instances before them in this country in the various 
cases growing out of the treaties with Great Britain, France, and other 
coiratries, that there can be no rendition of any one from one State to 



SEDITION EST THE NOETH. 107 

another, except in pursuance of some treaty or law specially made to 
effectuate the object. 

Indeed, in this very case of Arguellcs, when our consul at Havana was 
informed of the flight of Arguclles to New York, with a view to his recla- 
mation, the consul at once said that, in the absence of a treaty, no recla- 
mation could be had ; that if it were had it would be an " exceptional 
measure/' In this view he is confirmed by Judge Story in his Conflict 
of Laws ; by the practice of this Government in a case as early as 1792, 
wlien Mr. JeflTcrson urged a treaty with Spain ; in another case under the 
Jay treaty in 1799 ; in another case under Washington's administra- 
tion in 1797, for the rendition to Spain of certain criminals from 
Florida, then a Spanish province ; in another case in 1821, when William 
Wirt, as Attorney-General, held that the Executive had no power to 
arrest a refugee, except for the violation of our own laws ; in another 
case in 1831, of a Portuguese pirate, wherein Attorney-General Taney 
decided the same principle ; and in various other cases up to the time of 
our civil war, when, in a case of demand by Mr. Seward for rebels held 
by Spain, the Spanish Minister of State himself, Miraflores, insisted on a 
treaty of extradition as a prerequisite to the delivery. It makes my Amer- 
ican blood tingle to read the eloquent vindication of this great right from 
the lips of the Minister of Spain. I insert it here as the better sentiment 
of what is left of the free white men of America : 

" The right to give asylum to political refugees is in such manner rooted in the habits, 
la such sort interwoven with the ideas of tolerance of the present century, and has such 
frequent, generous, and beneficent applications in the extraordinary and ensanguined po- 
litical contests of the times we live in, that there is no nation in the world which dares to 
deny this right, and, moreover, not any one that can renounce its exercise. A^id if the 
Government of iVashington wishes to acquire a perfect and positive right to the deliveri; 
of those guilty of ordinary crimes, it will be accomplished by means of a treaty of extra- 
dition, to the conclusion of which the Spanish Government icoidd not oppose itself as it 
has not refused to conclude such with other States." 

I need not call the roU of English judges or statesmen who have spoken 
to the same eiFect with legal learning and indignant eloquence. The Cre- 
ole case gave rise to these discussions in the English Parliament. The 
great names of Aberdeen, Denman, Campbell, Brougham, and others 
might be cited, to show that the sanctity of asylum can only be invaded 
in pursuance of treaty or of statute. 

Yet, in defiance of all precedent, practice, and authority, this House 
proposes not to repeal the constitutional clause requiring fugitives from 
labor to be delivered up, but, preserving that clause, to nullify it altoge- 
ther by repealing the law by which alone the clause can be executed. 

On the charitable assumption that gentlemen on the other side intend 
to execute the Constitution, I say that it is indispensable that some law 
should exist to carry it out. As in the case of a treaty, as in the Arguel- 
les case, so in the case of a fugitive slave thei-e must be some law to carry 
out the treaty or clause of rendition. To repeal the law made for that 
purpose, is a covt^ardly blow at the Constitution itself. It is a breach of 
faith, a breach of treaty ; and between independent nations would be a 
easus belli. Between States banded like ours under a Constitution, it is 
a flagrant violation of a sacred compact. 



108 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

JUDICIAL DECISIONS AS TO FUGITIVES. 

Mr. Cox then showed by ample quotations that the Republicans held, 
in the matter of rendition of fugitives from labor, that the Federal Gov- 
ernment was a usurper of State rights, and " denied that the decisions of a 
usurping party in favor of the validity of its own assumptions can settle 
any thing ;" or, as Attorney-General "Wolcott argued (9 Ohio Reports, 
114), that " as to these powers, the States stand to each other and to the 
Federal Government as absolutely foreign nations." 

He then concluded by addressing the Republican side of the House : 
You are against the rendition of t"he black man in pursuance of the 
Constitution ; and you give up a white man who has sought an asylum 
on our shores without the form or substance of law or treaty, and in 
" positive defiance " of the law of nations and the Constitution. Your 
Executive is a usurper of the powers wisely distributed to the other depart- 
ments of the Government. Here you sit to-day striving to strike down 
the only mode whereby one peculiar clause of the Constitution can be 
carried out, and propose no mode as a substitute either by State or Fed- 
eral action. You will not allow an individaal to take his slave by the 
sanction of the Constitution alone ; you will pass no law to help him. 
You will not allow him to go into a free State and have his right there 
by jury trial, because you cannot try the claimant's right to a slave by 
a jury in a free State. You will not allow the law of 1793, which George 
"Washington assisted in making ; yet you strike down all the great rights 
of personal freedom for the white man fixed by the fathers of the country 
in our fundamental law, because you are demoniacally bent upon riving 
this Union in twain, and separating its parts forever. Your ideas arc not 
those of the higher, but of the lower law. They do not come from the 
sources of law and light and love above. They sunder all the tics of 
allegiance and all the sanctions of faith. You are destructionists ; you 
Avould tear down all that is valuable and sacred in the past and build up 
nothing in their place. You are revolutionists. You were trying for 
years by wrongful interference and force to nullify the very law which 
you now seek to expunge by repeal. You diligently sought to embroil 
the States in collision with the Federal Government, and have succeeded 
in bringing with your advent into power the consequences we predicted, 
a relentless and bloody war. I charge it upon every man of you on the 
other side of the House who took any part in these seditious infractions 
of the Constitution, who counselled individual and State resistance and 
fomented sectional strife, that you are in part responsible before God and 
the country for our present calamities. The enormous burdens of taxa- 
tion, the widow's tears, the orphan's curse, the wail of the bereaved, and 
the future destitution and consuming desolation of this land, all cry aloud 
against you as the authors of this worst evil which ever befell a suffering 
people ! 



III. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 

COXTINENTAL POLITICS — EUROPEAN PROTECTORATE OVER AMERICAN 
STATES — TERRITORIAL EXPANSION. 

In anticipation of the events which have recently transpired in the 
Spanish American States, this speech, and the one following upon Mexico, 
was delivered. On the 18th of January, 1859, addressing the House, 
Mr. Cox said : 

There is a logic in history which is as inexorable as fate. A writer in 
the time of the first Stuart gave as the number of the kingdoms of Chris- 
tendom, five-and-twenty. But there Avas no mention of three of the prin- 
cipal nations, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in their present divisions ; 
nor of twelve other nations out of the twenty now enumerated in Europe ; 
nor of the thirty petty sovereignties now extant in Germany. Within 
two centuries, the transatlantic continent has changed its territory and 
rulers beyond aU the caprices of fancy ; yet by a law as fixed as that 
which returns the seasons and rolls the stars. 

The disquieting aspect of cisatlantic politics signifies the consummation 
of territorial changes on this continent, long predicted, long delayed, but 
as certain as the logic of history ! 

Some of these changes in Europe have been through decay, dissolution, 
and disintegration. Spain was once the Peru and Mexico of the Old 
World. The ancestors of the hidalgo were enslaved in the mines of Spain 
by Rome and Carthage. But now, Leon, Aragon, Castile, Navarre, 
Toledo, Galicia, and Granada, once separate kingdoms, have lost their 
isolated glory, and are only known as the props of the " worm-eaten 
throne of Spain." The stronger races of Europe have consolidated their 
power by extending its sphere and absorbing the weaker neighboring 
nations. England, Ireland, and Scotland, by union, have been trans- 
planted into colonies and multiplied their strength ; and Russia has clasped 
the half of Europe and Asia in its strong embrace, until from the furthest 
West we perceive the conflict of civilization in the furthest East. 

These are but illustrations of a law from which America is not exempt. 
Not more surely will northern Africa, and indeed the countries whose 
boundaries are coincident with the Mediterranean, become French ; western 



110 EIGHT YEAKS EST CONGRESS. 

and northern Asia become Russian ; and southern and central Asia be- 
come EngUsh, than this continent become American ! The law which 
commands this is higher than Congressional enactment. If we do not 
work with it, it will work in spite of us. This law may be expressed 
thus : That the iveaker and disorganized nations must he absorbed by the 
strong and organized nations. Natiov alities of inferior grade must surreyi- 
der to those of superior civilization and polity ! 

Whether the races of this continent be in a tribal condition, as are our 
Indians, or in a semi-civilized and anarchical condition, as are the Central 
and South American and Mexican races, they must obey this law of politi- 
cal gravitation. This law drives them to the greater and more illustrious 
State for protection, happiness, and advancement. Whether the United 
States go and take them, or they come and ask to be taken, no matter. 
They must whirl in, throw off their nebulous and uncertain form, and 
become crystallized into the higher forms of civilization. 

The largest expression of this law of annexation is : That no nation 
has the right to hold soil, virgin and rich, yet unproducing ; no nation has 
a right to hold great isthmian highways, or strong defences, on this conti- 
nent, without the desire, will, or power to use them. They ought, and 
must, inure to the advancement of our commerce. They must become 
confiscate to the decrees of Providence ! 

In carrying out these designs, we have, from time to time, added ter- 
ritory from France, Spain, and Mexico. We have endeavored to add 
other territory, which the jealousy of France, Spain, and especially of 
England, has prevented. It is not my purpose now to rehearse our history 
in this regard. We may have kept step with our interests and our desti- 
ny ; but at this juncture, standing on the threshold of this new year, we 
are only marking time, not moving forward ! It is well to inquire whether 
there is not now upon us, as the assembled representatives of this nation, 
a peculiar duty with respect to this element of our progress. My judg- 
ment is, that we are to-day derelict. We are not up to the enterprise of 
the nation. If we consider just now the elements of our people, martial, 
mechanical, intellectual, agricultural, and political, who will doubt but 
that there are a dozen locomotive Republics already fii'ed up and ready for 
movement ? 

The Executive has done his duty. He has boldly followed out his 
Ostend ideas. He has urged upon us a duty, which being undone, leaves 
liim powerless, and leaves the national enthusiasm and expansion a prey 
to adventurous raids and seditious propagandists. Had the Thirty-Fourth 
Congress aided President Pierce in the Black Warrior matter, we should 
now liave representatives from Cuba on this floor ! 

The President has called our attention to the territory upon our south. 
Not New Granada — she will come in time. Not Venezuela — she is even 
yet more vital than New Granada. But the country north of these, and 
lying between tliem and us, must be absorbed. For this absorption we 
must contend, not so much with the people, whose interests will be en- 
hanced by tlic absorption, but with Spain, France, and England, who have 
no interests comparable with our own. These interests and antagonisms 
I propose to consider in this order : First, Cuba ; second, Central Ameri- 
ca ; third, Mexico. 



rOEEIGN AFFAIRS. Ill 

As to Cuba, the reasons for its acquisition are well understood by the 
country. The message has succinctly and ably presented them. Its geo- 
graphical position gives to the nation which holds it, unless that nation be 
very weak, a coigne of vantage as to which self-preservation forbids us to 
be indiffferent. Our Mississippi, foreign, and coastwise trade, now $250,- 
000,000, and in live years to be $500,000,000, are within its compass. 
While the island is of little use to Spain, save as a source of revenue, it is 
to us of incalculable advantage. The nature of the colonial office in Cuba, 
its power to harm us remedilessly, unless we go to Madrid for remedy, 
and the final stojiping of the slave trade, are reasons well urged by the 
President. Our unsettled claims, and the many other difficulties growing 
out of our relations to Spain, demand settlement, but receive none. 

How long shall we continue in this condition ? During the pleasure 
of Spain ? Is there no redress ? Is our every attempt to be construed 
into a usurpation? What impediments have we to meet? There is one 
which has since Mr. Adams's time proved insurmountable — Spanish pride. 
It is weU said by an old poet, that 

" Spain gives us pride, which Spain of all the earth 
May freely give, nor fear herself a dearth." 

Since then, there has been no curtailment of that pride. True, Spain 
has now httle to be proud of but her recollections. Poor, sensitive, cor- 
rupt, she holds to the punctilio of dignity without its substantial energy. 
If Spain will not sell Cuba to us, because she feels that she will thereby 
sell her honor, we must insist on her changing its policy. She should 
keep the island aloof from French intervention. She should preserve its 
independence. 

Above all, Spain should abolish her present infamous tariff. Her ex- 
port taritf is an anomaly in commerce, and her tariff upon imports is still 
more barbaric. Her export duty, which is a dkect tax on the producer 
of her sugars and tobacco, does not so much affect us, as the tax which 
she loads on our flour, pork, beef, and lard. We have tried in vain by 
diplomacy to unloosen these shackles. Nothing but the sword can cut 
them off. 

Up to 1809, Spain imposed restrictions on Cuba, by which no trade 
at all was allowed with any foreign nation. After this, and on the revival 
of the Spanish merchant-marine, the differential duty on goods imported 
in foreign bottoms was enacted. It was intended to crush out the trade 
with the United States. This continued till 1834, when this Congress 
passed retaliatory laws. No countervailing acts, however, could move 
the meanness of Spanish restriction. American flour, and other staples for 
which Cuba must look to a foreign market, are excluded. Thus a balance 
of trade, averaging $10,000,000 per year, is kept constantly against us. 
The duty in Cuba on flour imported from Spain is only $2.50 per baiTel ; 
from the United States, in American or other foreign bottoms, it is $10.81. 
So that, if flour be worth five dollars in Cincinnati, the cost to the Cuban 
consumer is sixteen dollars per barrel ! This enormous tax on flour pre- 
vents its use in the island, except by the wealthy few — the thirty-five 
thousand Spaniards. The body of the poor and oppressed Creoles are 
compelled to use the dry and insipid cassava root as a substitute for bread. 



112 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

This tariff on flour, added to an infamous tonnage-tax, operates as a pro- 
liibition on flour. With a moderate duty, or if Cuba were annexed, its 
consumption, as it is estimated by our economists, would be a million of 
barrels ! It would be enjoyed by us exclusively — benefit the farmers of 
my State and yours. That is evident from the fact, that no other country 
could compete with us in that staple ; for no other country is so near to 
Cuba, or so pi'olific in breadstuffs. 

We exported to Cuba, in 1857, only 45,145 barrels of flour, worth 
$324,410; in 1858, 17,905 barrels, worth $105,069. Of other articles, 
beef, poifk, lard, hams, and bacon, and including flour, we had, in 1857, 
but $1,808,783 ; in 1858, but $1,228,119. Whereas, had a liberal com- 
mercial economy, like that of Belgium, Holland, or Great Britain, ob- 
tained, we should have had, at least, $10,000,000 of produce exported. 
This would nearly have balanced our trade in sugar and coffee, and on 
these ive have fixed no prohibitive tariff! Thus our commerce is crippled 
under the blows of this Spanish oppression. Why, even the Spanish 
Crown would be better helped by a more liberal policy. Such a system, 
in this era of commercial freedom, is a shame to civilization, and if inter- 
national law were rightly written, it would, itself, be a cause of honorable 
war ! But I have no hope that Spain will sell Cuba, or that the Cubans 
understand the nature of the blessings which attend annexation. They 
will not perceive that they become, by annexation, coequal with New 
York and Ohio, in a common league for the common weal. They fear 
for their church and domestic institutions, as if they were any part of 
Federal concernment. 

I was surprised to meet an impediment raised by a distinguished. Sen- 
ator [Hammond] from South Cai-olina in his Barnwell speech. I trust 
it is not shared by many Southern men. He objects to taking Cuba ; first, 
because it may involve a war, whose consequences he states to be fearful. 
He leaves us in doubt as to these consequences. Does he mean the re- 
duction of Cuba to the condition of Hayti? A terrible consequence. 
That might follow ; but that is rather an English than a Spanish threat, 
and hardly capable of execution in a time when Spain and France are re- 
viving the slave trade to cheapen tropical produce. His second objection 
is more salient. I quote it entire : 

"If we had Cuba, we could not make more than two or three slave States there, 
which would not restore the equilibrium of the North and the South ; while, with the 
African slave trade closed, and her only resort to this continent, she would, besides crush- 
ing out our whole sugar culture by her competition, afford in a few years a market for all 
the slaves in Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. She is, notwithstanding the exorbitant 
taxes imposed on her, capable now of absorbing the annual increase of all tlie slaves on 
this continent, and consumes, it is said, twenty or thirty thousand a year by her system 
of labor. Slaves decrease there largely. In time, under the system practised, every slave 
in America might be exterminated in Cuba as were the Indians. However the idle 
African may procreate in the tropics, it yet remains to be proven, and the facts are 
against the conclusion, that he can, in those regions, work and thrive. It is said Cuba is 
to be ' Africanized,' rather than that the United States should take her. That threat, 
which at one time was somewhat alarming, is no longer any cause of disquietude to the 
South, after our experience of the Africanizing of St. Domingo and Jamaica. What have 
we lost by that ? I think we reaped some benefit ; and if the slaves of Cuba are turned 
loose, a great sugar culture would grow up in Louisana and Texas, rivalling that of cot- 
ton, and diverting from it so much labor- that cotton would rarely be below its present 
price." 



FOKEIGN AFFAIRS. 113 

This objection is two-fold. The inter-state slave trade with Cuba, in 
case of annexation, he thinks, would make several free States, by the de- 
mand and consumption of negroes ; and even if it would not, Cuba would 
not give the South the preponderance in {lie Union ; and secondl>/, sugar he 
thinks would be cheap to the whole Union ; while a few thousand sugar 
planters, who just thrive on the bounty they now get, would be ruined. 
As to the argument about Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland becoming 
free thi'ough Cuban annexation, I leave that to the members from those 
States. As to the sugar, I say, that an argument of that kind addressed 
to a free-trade people, by a free-trader, should go far to weaken the mo^ 
rale of his great and frank speech, as it does the economy of his politics. To 
the people of my State, such an argument will quicken their ambition to 
acquire Cuba ; not alone because of the millions to be gained by an increase 
of our exports thither, which are taxed prohibitively ; but because we. 
pay a tax on Cuban sugar, which is harsh, protective, and indefensible, 
in any epoch of a depressed exchequer. In 1857, there were, in all, of 
sugar and molasses, imported from Cuba into the United States, $40,093,- 
466 worth. The tariff on these sugars was $12,028,039.80. Ohio paid 
one-tenth of this, or about twelve hundred thousand dollars, which is 
equal to her immense school tax, and nearly a half a million more than 
she pays for her State government, and nearly one-half the expenses of 
all her counties. By our tariff of 1857, we reduced the tax on sugar six 
per cent., and the panic reduced the importation enormously. During the 
year ending June 30, 1858, our sugars from Cuba amounted to only $18,- 
620,022, giving a revenue of $4,468,805.28, at twenty-four per cent, ad 
valorem. 

Since 1847, when Mr. Polk proposed annexation, this nation must 
have paid over sixty millions of sugar tax ! Ohio has paid of that sum 
$6,000,000. My district has paid one-twentieth part of $6,000,000, or 
$300,000 ; an annual tax of $30,000, all for what ! That one of the 
prime necessaries of life should be fostered into premature growth, to aid 
a few sugar planters in the South ! If Cuba cannot be annexed, to break 
this serviUty, by which the many are made tributary to the few, then we 
must remodel our Democracy and economy. My State Legislature, in 
, 1854, passed a resolution, at my solicitation, requesting Congress to abate 
^this tax. There is no reason for its existence. 

" But," it is said, " we must protect Texas and Louisiana in their few 
sugar plantations ! If Cuba comes in, away goes the tax !" Every man, 
woman, and child, in my State, will say : " Away with it '. Welcome 
Cuba and free sugar !" " But," says the Senator, " if Cuba be African- 
ized and kept out, it will keep up the price of sugar, and a great growth 
will spring up, rivalling cotton." What then? Ecstasy! "Negroes 
will be in demand. Cotton, too, will be kept high ! " What an argu- 
ment for a Senator of all the United States, every one of whose intereste 
are his own ! The Union is a cotton-pod ! [Laughter.] Its growth 
dependent on the growth of the cane ! If, by this logic, Cuba is to be 
kept out, let us know it. Already the Republican mouth grows juicy at 
the prospect with Cuba in the Union ! [Laughter.] It matters not if 
sugar be made by slaves. That little delicacy of Exeter-HaU sentimental- 



114 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

ity is becoming obsolete. Even our Quakers are willing to drink cheap 
damnation in their coiFee-cups, and eat it on their buckwheats ! 

My most distinguished constituent, the Governor of my State, and a 
candidate for the Presidency, will soon outvie your southern Hotspurs in 
the race of annexation, if thus you dress your laggard logic. In a speech 
at a Yankee festival in my city, where the Pilgrims were praised for 
many a virtue which they had not, and their intolerable intolerance was 
glossed over by the fervor of the hour. Governor Chase is reported to 
have advocated the policy of " leaving to every one the absolute control 
of all matters of domestic concernment," and an " indefinite expansion 
of empire." If this does not include Cuba, I will ask his friends oppo- 
site to say what is excluded by his concluding remark, that as the last 
result of the enlarging empire both of American Government and Ameri- 
can principles, he summons " the parliament of man to sit on the desti- 
nies of the world"? 

I did not dream that I should ever have to welcome the Ohio aspirant 
for the White House into the support of its present occupant. I did not 
dream last fall that I shoiald represent him so nearly. I warn gentlemen 
of the South to observe these signs, and prevent this grand larceny of De- 
mocratic thunder, by considering the proposition which some gentleman 
last session called national grand larceny ! Call it by what name you 
will, I am ready to answer the call of the President, if for nothing else, 
for the benefit of our ^250,000,000 of yearly trade, which must pass under 
the range of Cuban cannon. I am ready to vote for the bill of the gentle- 
man from North Carolina [Mr. Branch], looking to the purchase of Cuba ; 
and I am not very particular as to the amount of money with which to 
fill the blank in his bill. In case of our failure to purchase by honorable 
negotiation, I v/oidd favor its seizure in case of foreign war, or of a Euro- 
pean intervention. 

As to Central America, I do not desire to enter so fully into our rela- 
tions with this region. That has been ably done by my friend from Vir- 
ginia [Mr. Jenkins]. We know well the impediment existing in the 
way of our acquisition there. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty — the diploma- 
tic blunder of the century — stands as a huge gorgon in our path. The 
policy of its abrogation is conceded ; but " how not to do it " seems to have 
been the practice. The present Executive, in his message of December 8, 
1857, bewailed this condition of things. He inherited, as did Presid^t 
Pierce, this treaty of peace, which has proved a treaty of offence. Eng- 
land and the United States have been quarrelling over its construction, 
when its destruction was the most pacific course that could have been 
adopted. Collateral treaties may be made which will prevent the conse- 
quence of an abrupt abrogation of this treaty. Diplomacy is now, we are 
told, working to this end. 

But there is in the American mind a chronic distrust of England. It 
is well grounded in her laxity of faith. When her interests can be sub- 
served, she breaks any compact ; and only adheres to it when demanded 
by her interests. Whether the ti-eatics to be made with Honduras, Costa 
Ilica, and Nicaragua, throttle this bantling of Bulwer, whether we are to 
lose still more by British dilatory diplomacy, remains to be seen. One 
thing is remarkable, that we have not advanced since 1849, when Nica- 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 115 

ragua, irr the Hiess-Selva treaty, proposed to " confer on us the exclusive 
right " of an interoceanic canal, or highway. Had that treaty been con- 
firmed, we might hav'e had to-day forts and free cities along its route and 
at its termini, with full right to protect Nicaragua by all the strength of 
our navy and army. A year later, and that wily diplomatist, Bulwer 
— who, for his tact, is sent to the Bosphorus to teach Russia her role in 
the East — comes forward with his projet. Our Government nibbles coyly 
at his bait ; but, like a foolish fish, at last leaps for the fly, is barbed, and 
hauled in to flounder for the amusement of the world. "Would that Mr. 
Clayton had weighed the meaning of Smelfungus's philosophy : " It is 
always time to cut your throat ; but if your throat is once cut, there are 
certain difficulties in the way of reconsidering your determination." 

Crampton and Webster tried in 1852 to unravel the web. Then Web- 
ster and Molina tried it, with the aid of Costa Rica. Then Wheeler and 
Escobar, acting for Nicaragua, made an effort, which our Government 
failed to accept. Then Clarendon and Herran, for Honduras, sought to 
untie the knot ; and this led the way to the Cass-Yrisari treaty in the fall 
of 1857, which began de novo. Then, a fair treaty was made, allowing 
us the protectorate of the transit ; but through foreign influence it was so 
modified by Nicaragua as to be unacceptable to our Government. Now, 
Sir Gore Ouseley, having ceased to be a diplomatic m^-th here, has gone 
to the South, where, we trust, something may be done to cancel that part 
of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty by which we agreed with England to cut 
our throats, by never " occupying, fortifying, or colonizing, or assuming 
or exercising any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito 
coast, or any part of Central America." We trust that such an agree- 
ment may be made to this end ; but my reading of history is vain, if we 
do not find throAvn about this abrogotion some clog which the American 
people will not bear. 

The truth is, that we have slept so long, and dreamed so transport«- 
ingly of our destiny over these regions, that meanwhile Japan and China 
are opened ; Frazer's River becomes an Eldorado ; and English and French 
navies, quitting the attempt on Cronstadt, and tiring of the red storm of 
the Euxine, display their guns on this continent. Their entente cordiale, 
as Clarendon said it would be, is extended to this hemisphere ; and here 
we have them ! They are, by their presence, if not by their diplomacy, 
ignoring the far-famed doctrine of Mr. Monroe, which had, when first 
given, as general a meaning and as practical a use, as it ought now to 
have a specific application. His doctrine was, that the countries of the 
American continent, by the free and independent condition which they 
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects 
for future colonization or influence by any European Power. 

Let controversy contend as to the meaning of this doctrine. I know 
that when Yucatan was about to be taken by England, and when English 
arms were furnished her for an independency of Mexico, which would 
have been a dependency of England, Mr. Calhoun then tried, in an able 
speech, to limit the application of that doctrine to the surroundings out 
of which it grew, namely, to the intervention of the holy alliance to' 
recover the revolted American States for Spain, and the Russian occu- 
palion on our northwest. But the declaration has a larger meaning; 



116 EIGHT YEABS IN CONGRESS. 

It has become settled policy. In 1823, Mr. Jefferson laid it down 
thus : 

" Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to, entangle ourselves in the 
broils of Europe ; our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cisatlantic 
aflairs." 

Yet this doctrine is sneered at, as if Monroe's ghost were invoked to 
do a kind of constable's duty, to warn all foreign intruders from this con- 
tinent. So far as emigration is concerned, this continent is open as day ; 
but no flag, no policy, no institution, no colonies, no protectorates of Eu- 
rope, can exist here, without endangering the peace, infringing the rights, 
or disturbing the order and prospective interests of this continent. What- 
ever may have been the occasion of the Monroe declaration, its cause is 
as eternal as liberty, and its consequences will be as progressive as our 
nation. I care not for its traditionary emphasis. Democrats, at least, 
can afibrd to let that go. Is it sound doctrine for the present? If so, it 
ought to be the enthusiastic sentiment and genius of this Government. 
If so, let it be no more the jeer of Europe, the swagger of America, 
but a fact as much a part of our historic life as the Declaration of In- 
dependence, which was its procreant source. It is the law of self- 
preservation. General Cass, in his recent letter, has given it proper 
direction. It was intended to guard this continent against the incur- 
sion of any alliances, '' holy " or xmholy. It looked to that law 
which I have laid down, by which the interests and honor of this hemi- 
sphere were to be guarded by none but ourselves. We do not want to be 
foreclosed against its occupation, fortification, and annexation. In the 
present feeling of this country, no treaty can be made and made to stand, 
if it does not break down all protectorates of England and all interfer- 
ence of France. The Senate of the United States dare not confirm such 
a treaty. The present Executive will not present it. The present Secre- 
tary of State will not sanction it. 

Does England want Honduras, Yucatan, the Belize? What are they 
to her ? Nothing, except as she can use them to block up the progress 
of this nation. Does she Avant free passage over the Central American 
States ? That she can have under our auspices and with safety ! What 
does she with the Valorous and the Leopard in the Caribbean Sea ? Why 
do her officers spy for arms in the American steamer Washington ? Is it 
only fillibusters she is after? I do distrust her. If she seems to acqui- 
esce in our view for a time, may we not attribute it to that popular Avill 
which compels her aristoci'acy to more prudence in reference to America? 
She pretended to settle all in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty ; yet that treaty 
was a delusion and a snare. Wiiile that treaty Avas yet warm, England 
drove the Nicaraguan forces out of San Juan del Norte ; then she pirates 
that entrepot from an independent State ; anoints a hybrid savage as a 
king ; gives to a few Jamaica negroes, dressed like the Georgia major 
without Iiis spurs, the constabulary baton, and builds a congeries of negro 
huts wliicli she nicknames after the Earl Grey. She performs the same 
olfice for Honduras, by what Clarendon called the " spontaneous settle- 
ment" of tlie Bay Islands ; and then claims from us good faith in keep- 
ing the compact which she breaks ! Then comes Sir Gore Ouseley to 



I 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 117 

maintain the delusion, in spite of Lord Napier, who goes liome. Wliat 
more? She approves of the Cass-Yrissari treaty by fomenting diflTicuhies 
in the way of its ratification. She pretends to Mr. Dallas, through 
Malmeshury, that Belly is a French adventurer for whom she has no sym- 
pathy ; yet, in acts, gives to him French and English protection, through 
the alliance. It is not safe to trust her. Her treaties are ropes of sand. 
Her international law is too elastic for use by any but herself. Her de- 
signs are steeped in fraud ; and all complications with her are dangerous 
and entangling. Thank God ! we have a Secretary of State whose life is 
marked with signal ability in anticipating, demonstrating, and frustrating 
her designs. This nation will sustain him in his declaration that 

" The establishment of a political protectorate by any one of the Powers of Europe 
over any of the mdepeudent St;\tcs of this continent, or, in other words, the introduction 
of a scheme of policy which would carry with it a right to interfere in their concerns, is 
a measure to which the United States have long since avowed their opposition, and which, 
should the attempt be made, they will resist by all the means in their power." 

Behind this rock the present Administration are intrenched. There is 
no feeling in this country worth calling patriotism, which does not stand 
squarely up to this high and strong position. Why should not this Con- 
gress, by some definite action, stand by the popular sense and the Govern- 
ment? I am ready either to give the moral force of a resolution such as 
that now referred to the Committee of the Whole, to abrogate the Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty ; or I am ready to go further, and to clothe the President 
with extraordinary powers, and to give him means, or the authority to 
procure means, by which his recommendations may be acted on. 

But it may be said. Why so much risk of war with the combined 
powers of Europe ; why so much anxiety for the Isthmus or Central 
American route ? Not because we are in danger of being cut off from its 
dominion. That will come, if these Central American States remain in- 
dependent of European consti'aint. Not because it is the only feasible 
mode of transit for the great oriental trade between the oceans ; for in 
time there will be rapid and safe transits on our own soil. Not so much be- 
cause we ought to have and hold the hundred and fifty millions of trade with 
these Spanish American tropical lands, instead of but ten millions which 
we now have. But nature never made so narrow an obstacle, one so 
easily severed, and on which such gi'eat commercial and economical re- 
sidts depended, as that at Darien or Nicaragua. She buried mountains 
and valleys beneath the wave, to narrow that neck, and thus expand the 
bounds of interchange, and encircle the earth with a white zone of ar- 
gosies. 

If New Granada shall be ours, as it should be within a twelvemonth, 
unless the Congress of Bogota show more honesty and wisdom in settling 
the claims of our Panama sufi'erers, than is likely ; if New Granada would 
follow the advice of Gonzales, her attorney-general, and enhance her in- 
terests by applying for admission to our Union ; and if Venezuela would 
follow the wise inclinations of her patriot chief. General Paez, whose exile 
hei-e has made him love the land of his home the more for the prospect of 
uniting its fortunes with ours ; then, indeed, these Central American States, 
now the football of European diplomacy, must citlier come to us, or be 
powdered into nothingness between the industrial movements of the sur- 



118 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

rounding States. Once let the agriculture of Venezuela be smiled upon 
by a protecting Government, and her magnificent ports would soon fill 
with the keels of her elder commerce. Let northern energy blend with 
her undirected labor, and the gold mines of Upata would gleam with their 
olden treasures. Let Panama break from her vassalage to her irrespon- 
sible rulers, and that mart of the golden age of Spain and her viceroys will 
teem with a wealth which no buccaneers in a thousand caravels can bear 
away. These accomplished, and the intermediate States of Nicaragua, 
Costa Rica, Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala wiU follow, as surely as 
the sheaf of the summer follows the seed of the spring. The trade of all 
tropical America would then fall to us naturally by our proximity, and 
by the variety of our productions with which to barter. These tropical 
wastes ought to give us coffee, indigo, and cocoa, which are failing .in In- 
dia, as well as the cabinet woods, so much in demand. In return they 
will take our flour, pork, machinery, fabrics, and a thousand other articles 
which they need, and which every State of this Union produces. Our 
trade, which now coimts its hundreds, will then count its millions. 

If this Congress has optic nerve enough to look a few years ahead, it 
will at least start a policy that wUl secure all the isthmus highways, 
wliich are so indispensable to our development and power. Its first duty 
is to repel every attempt of the remotest influence, come from what quar- 
ter it may, which may impede this procession of events or arrest our in- 
evitable and legitimate aggrandizement. No nation with one harbor, 
much less a nation with a coast bestrewn with harbors like ours, can be 
long prosperous within, that does not prosper and grow without. When 
a State, which is commercial by situation, forgets the work of outbuilding 
its empire, it loses its inner vitality. The day tliat marks its failure to 
meet every rising opportunity of advancement abroad, marks its sure de- 
cline at home. As with the individual, so with the State ; if its ambition 
be dead and its hopes of expansion smoulder, its dissolution is speedy and 
sure. While its intellectual arid physical energies are tense and grasp a 
large range, its internal and foreign empire will become consummate, be- 
cause it has the everlasting law of growth ! 

We have illustrated that law with reference to our southern neighbor, 
Mexico. The effete and wasted portions of Mexico, being one-half of her 
area, lying next to us, became nutriment to our stalwart strength. The 
very dirt of the ground became assimilated with our energy, and lo ! from 
our Mexican purchases, $70,000,000 of gold per year are sucked into 
every conduit of American life, to enhance its happiness, and give fresh 
comfort to its homes. It Avas once objected, that the soil of California, 
New Mexico, and Arizona was poor ; a land of' sand and centipedes ; 
that there was no homogeneity in the people. True, they have six millions 
of Indians, with Spaniards in plenty and pride, and of mixed people not a 
few. But arc they worse than the Indians of our own soil? On the con- 
trary, they are far better. They are tractable, stout, and laborious. 
Spain managed them with but a handful of soldiers for three hundred 
years. She managed them, too, under every provocation to revolt. Had 
an American protectorate been the sequence of Scott's occupation, a few 
months of protection would have given their industry its reward and 
peace its blessing. Then, too, we should have no apprehension to disturb 
our present relations with Mexico. 



FOKEIGN ATFAIKS. 119 

To these relations I propose to call the attention of tfie House. lu 
the discussion, I need only remark, historically, that on the discovery of 
this continent there was but one nation in North, and one in South Amer- 
ica, which seemed to be possessed of any civilized advancement. Peru, 
under the Incas, whose white robes betokened the almost divine simplicity 
of the people ; and Mexico with a society that was Arcadian in its sim- 
^plicity, and with a polity wonderful in its complications. The State, 
the priesthood, the cultivators of the soil, the rulers, and the ruled of 
Mexico, lived in peace under a lovelier sky than that of Naples, and on a 
richer soil than that of 'ancient Latium. Let it be remembered that this 
prosperity and contentment were not alone the result of good laws, but of 
good land ; of good manners, but of good mines. There was, in the Aztec 
tongye, no language of cupidity, though gold roofed the temple and jasper 
built the altar. 

I need not repeat that this isolated case of civilization on this northern 
continent was mostly the result of the unparalleled climate and soil. That 
climate and soil remain. Three hundred years of misrule have not im- 
paired the salubrity of the one, nor detracted from the wealth of the other. 

The Spanish rule at length was thrown off for a Republic like ours. 
The inborn sfrength to throw it off, after so long a trial, showed a spirit 
of freedom which I'eceived its plaudits from this nation at the time. In 
February, 1821, at Iguala, Mexico declared her independence. On the 
4th of October, 1824, she adopted her constitution. England was first to 
recognize this progress, and, as usual, for her profit. The lower clergy 
and the masses, consisting of Indians, were its creators and beneficiaries. 
The upper clergy never sympathized with this severance from Europe ; 
and until the revolution of Ayutla, consummated by Comonfort, they 
never became a power in politics. His policy touched their estates. 
They struck back. His law of desamortizacion confiscated $18,000,000 
of their property, which passed to private individuals. They struck back, 
even at this compromise confiscation. Comonfort reeled under their 
blow ; reeled from the Puros to the Moderados, and from the Moderados 
to the Church and its conservative defenders, into whose arms he and his 
anti-Church policy fell. We need not wonder at these changes, when we 
remember that a magnificent and organized hierarchy held $300,000,000 
of property, with a revenue of $20,000,000, being $5,000,000 more than 
the best annual Government revenue. 

Mr. Gushing said, at Richmond, that these party names of Liberal, 
Constitutional, Pure, Moderate, Central, and Federal, so often appearing 
in our Mexican news, " were but the watchwords of contending factions, 
eflacient aUke only to waste their common country." Hardly true ; for it 
must be remembered that in Mexico, as in all nations, there will be par- 
ties founded on interest or hope, conservative or radical, with intervening 
moderate shades. There is in Mexico, well-defined, a Central, Federal, 
or Conservative party, under whose rally men of wealth and of the Church, 
and of unprogressive temperament, naturally gather. This party would 
centralize power in the federal Government, and thei'eby become aggres- 
sive upon the States. It would lean toward a strong government ; and 
hence its eye is ever on tradition and Spain. It would to-day hail Spain 
or France as its master to attain its end. Santa Anna, Zuloaga, and 



120 EIGHT YEARS LN CONGEESS. 

Bobles have been its executive representatives. Miramon assumes the 
same position just now. The natural antagonists of this party are the 
Puros, the Moderados, Constitutionalists, Democrats, or call them what 
you will. Federal restraint to them is irksome ; Europe and kingcraft 
hateful ; and the Church despotic and avaricious. In the language of Mr. 
Gadsden to Alvarez, in June, 1855, " they would limit the central power 
to that alone which is exterior ; and thus they would seek, like the United 
States, to gi-ow without anarchy into strength and prosperity." Their 
aspiration is for a republic Hke our own. They need and deserve our 
sympathy. Juarez is their Executive — a pure Indian, whose descent is 
from Montezuma. DegoUado is their general, and Mata their minister, 
seeking recognition here. This party have a majority of the States and 
nine-tenths of the people of Mexico with them. They have the revenues. 
They hold the ports. Their President is de jure and de facto Executive. 
A little more patience, Mr. Forsyth, and you would have recognized it 
thus, and not (as you did) otherwise ! De jure ; for, by the Constitution 
of Mexico, adopted by an extraordinary Congress, at the Capitol, February 
5, 1857, it was provided, by section seventy-nine, that — 

" In temporary default of a President of the Kepublic, and in the vacancy before the 
installation of the newly-elected President, the president of the Supreme Court of Justice 
shall enter upon the exercise of the functions of President." 

And, article thirty-two : 

" If, from whatever reason, the election of President shall not have been made and 
pnbhshed by December 1st, upon which the change is to take place, or if the newly elect- 
ed is not able to enter promptly upon the exercise of his functions, the term of the pre- 
ceding President shall nevertheless cease, and the supreme executive power shall be de- 
posited ad interim in the president' of the Supreme Court of Justice." 

When, therefore, on the 11th of January, 1858, General Comonfort 
vacated the Presidency, the Constitution devolved the office upon Benito 
Juarez, the president of the Supreme Court of Justice. De facto ; for he 
holds the field, and has the money and the masses. The Federal army, it 
is true, was not at his command. Felix Zuloaga was illegally nained Dic- 
tator by a clique at the capital, January 22, 1858 ; and he having the army, 
and holding the capital, Juarez transferred the administration to Vera 
Cruz. There was no such officer known as Dictator, and Zuloaga has 
paid the penalty of usurpation by deposition. There can be but one ex- 
ecutive, and Robles, who assumed Zuloaga's place, was not that officer. 
The Constitution under which Juarez acts is the only organic law, and 
that does not recognize the junta which elected Miramon, to whom Robles 
yielded his fasces. This Constitution is the rallying cry of the Liberals ; 
to its defence the nation is committed ; by it alone is order possible. To 
sustain its upholders is clearly the duty, as it is the interest and desire, of 
the United States. President Buchanan has well considered these facts. 
In the success of the constitutional party he places all his hopes of redress 
for the innumerable outrages to our citizens. If this party fail, and there 
" being abundant cause for a resort to hostilities against the Government 
now holding possession of the capital," I am ready to vote for any sys- 
tem of reprisal, or to grant the Executive the power to take possession 
of any portion of Mexico, as a pledge for the settlement of our claims. 
I say that I am ready to vote for such reprisal or occupation. But I 



i 



FOREIGN AFFAIES. 121 

have considered these parties in Mexico with the view of qualifying this 
declaration. I believe that it would be best, at once, to recognize the 
Juarez Constitutional Government, by the most solemn assurances of 
sympathy and protection. The late news makes this step imminently ur- 
gent. This can be done, first, by the prompt recognition of Mata, -who 
is here seeking such recognition ; second, by the sending of a naval force 
to the Gulf, wliere we are unrepresented. This force should be accom- 
panied by a commissioner to treat with the Juarez Government ; to coun- 
teract the influence of the allied fleets now aiding Miramon and Robles, 
and threatening Juarez ; and with the latter to cement an alliance, and to 
obtain such a settlement of our claims and difficulties as will comport' 
with our interest and honor. I have the surest authority for saying, that 
such an arrangement would give us, not only a firm union with Mexico, 
not only postal and extradition and right-of-way treaties, not only a foot- 
hold in the northern Mexican States, which can be made permanent with- 
out war ; hut it xvould foil every attempt of the Uuropean alliance to con- 
trol the affairs of llexico. It Avould crush the Robles-Miramon Govern- 
ment, elevate and organize the Democratic American sentiment, and give 
us an alliance of peace, which is the precursor of a magnificent com- 
merce. 

If, however, we seize Sonora and Chihuahua, without an understand- 
ing with th,e Constitutional Government, vv^hat will be the result ? Poor 
and miserable as is the condition of JMexico, she would likely declare 
war. Such a declaration would come from the Robles-Miramon faction. 
It would draw to that faction the strength of the nation. It would, per- 
haps, crush Juarez and his parly, and leave us no better off than if we 
had pursued a more politic and pacific course. 

Again, if Ave delay to recognize the Constitutional Government, it 
will soon be in power at the capital as it is in the provinces. It can tlien 
say to us, ''Oh, yes ; you would not help us in our extremity, when your 
advantage should have prompted you, and your sympathy would have 
been of service. We can get along without your aid now. Touch not a 
foot of our soil, on the penalty of an endless difficulty." Wisdom, inter- 
est, the laAv of American progress, and the pred.ominance of our Union 
on this continent, all urge tlie course I have indicated. Juarez waits our 
action. Shall we miss the golden opportunity ? If we fail in our efforts 
with him, then I am willing at once to take Sonora and Chihuahua, 
whichever party succeeds. 

I believe that the list of American claims and cruelties, which has 
even provoked the English press to wonder at our forbearance, is warrant 
enough for such possession. There are even yet higher grounds for such 
seizure. The French Minister, De Gabriac, rules in the Miramon coun- 
cils. A French fleet rides before Sacrificios. The French admiral was 
very ready to back Spain in her demands. To break this French power 
is our imperative duty. If it be not broken, our line of extension south- 
ward to Central America will he broken irrevocably. 

Such is the condition of parties in Mexico. I need not discuss it 
further. The contest now is between the democratic element and the 
conservative element. The latter has its eye ever on Europe, and averse 
to the jUnited States. Its rule has proved tlie most distracting and dis- 



122 EIGHT TEAES EST CONGEESS. 

astrous ever yet known in the onnals of the South American Republics, 
where the earthquake and the revolution alike awake the same sad cry 
of anguish, and receive the same defiant, destructive answer. 

I need not have pictured this land of beauty and order as it was once, 
to heighten the contrast of its present condition. After thirty-eight years 
of debilitating spasms, Ave find, to-day, the spectacle of Mexico helpless, 
bleedin"-, dying ; the Turkey of the western world ; and capable of no 
effort even of resistance to the Spanish fleet, much less to the French or 
En<i-lish. Rapacity, crime, chaos, craft, license, and brutality; indolence 
only active to wrong, and industry quickened only for vice ; laws made 
for their infraction, and order to be contemned. Mountain cries unto valley 
for relief ; and from hacienda to city goes up the agony of despair. This 
is unhappy Mexico, in whose fate no nation ever can have the interest 
we have till such a nation conquer us. Who shall intervene? 

Were it only the natives v/ho suffered, we might stand aloof, and say, 
" They have made their bed ; let them lie in it." But even this would be 
culpable indifference. Good neighborhood does not thus do its office. 
The artisans of the city of Mexico are out of employment, and hungering 
for food. Let this one fact speak volumes. In. the three pawnbroking 
establishments of the city, called Montes de Piedad, the last year, there 
were 68,000 borrowers out of a population of 185,000 ; $912,000 was 
loaned, and $869,000 paid for its use. With an army of 11,700 men, of 
whom 5,800 are officers, and a debt of $120,000,000, and an expenditure 
by two Governments ; with but one-eighth of her arable soil cultivated, 
and her mines unworked, or if worked the treasures at the mercy of the 
red guerrilleros who infest every avenue of intercourse ; with every one 
of her twenty-two States and six Territories parading an array of contend- 
ing forces and ambitious guerilla chiefs ; Garza and Vidaurri conferring 
in the North to move down and check the Federalists of the interior ; 
Pesquiera about to move on Mazatlan ; Alatriste on the plains of Apam ; 
Camaiion, from Matamoras de Izucar, waiting to besiege Puebla ; Blanco 
in Michoacan ; Iturbide in the Bahia ; Marquez repulsed from the Puente 
Calderon, around which gather the combating forces under Miramon, 
Brocha, and Degollado ; Mejia defeated by the liberal forces under Pueb- 
lita and Huerta ; the environs of the capital swarming with the Liberal 
soldiery ; this was the picture of a few days ago ! 

The scene changes. The Federal chief Echeagaray betrays Zuloaga, 
and, in collusion with Robles, makes the latter chief. Echeagaray in turn 
is imprisoned at Puebla ; is about to be shot ; when, lo ! an insurrection 
in the city of Mexico saves him, and Zuloaga rushes to the English flag 
for protection. In this complication, a junta is called to settle the diffi- 
culty ; and who should be chosen but Miramon, a dashing young general, 
flushed Avith his successes over the LilJerals, and who moves toward the 
city under tlie fluttering pennons of his cavalry. MeanAvhile young Ah a- 
rez and Villava lead their speckled Pintos doAvn on the Avarm lowlands 
for pillage ; Avhile Juarez, dignified and statesmanlike, holds his rule in 
Vera Cruz, the commercial metropolis. Mexican conducta go down to 
the sea under the French flag, to get his revenues, to help one party by 
robbing the other ; while the fleets of the tlu-ee great nations of Europe 
gather on her coasts, and ask, from their gaping gun-mouths, the results 



FOKEiaN AFFAIRS. 123 

of spent plunder ! It is as if Dives should besiojre Lazaras with a bowie 
knife and revolver, and bid him disgorge the furtive crumb, as indemnity 
for the past and security for the future ! Fifty generals and a nation of 
seven millions, not knowing what may be their fate ! Ilie Agiotistas 
hold the money and oppress w'ith it. The generals murder and pillage in 
gross, and the bandits in detail. Indians never before in arms rush to 
them for self-preservation. Foreigners, ever at the mercy of these fickle 
factions, find no protection in their flags, and no hope but in passive sub- 
mission to forced loans and open robbery. This is the spectacle of muti- 
lated Mexico, to-day. To-morrow it may be worse ! 

I repeat it, Who shall intervene ? Some one must. Our interest is 
paramount. AVhy this interest? Not only our proximity to Mexico; 
not alone the number of our citizens domiciliated in the country ; but a 
common interest in the development, in retouching, as it were, into its 
primeval color and grace, of that elder beauty -which Spain tarnished and 
anarchs have torn to shreds. Our interest lies first in Mexico's erect and 
orderly independency. If that be no longer possible, then that no Power 
but our own shall guard its weakness and administer its estate. This is 
the only programme which this nation can tolerate, and by which it dare 
abide and survive or gi*ow ! 

As to our proximity : the reasons on this head for our intervention 
are well set forth in the President's message ; I cannot add to its force. 
A temporary protectorate will etFectually, if not nominally, give us the 
States of Sonora and Chihuahua. They are very sparsely populated, 
there being about tbree hundred thousand persons to their two hundred 
and tw^enty-three thousand seven hundred and ten square miles. These 
lands are represented as delightful in climate and rich in resources, agri- 
cultural and mineral. They have been described as the land of the blessed 
in Oriental story. Summer and winter, table land and valley, are nearer 
akin here than in most places in the Avorld. Silver is in their streams — 
in lodes with crests elevated above the ground. Spain demonstrated their 
riches ; but the nomadic Apaches swept over this Eldorado, and left but a 
memory of its treasures which American enterprise is already vitalizing 
into a reality. 

Is it objected by southern gentlemen that these States must become 
free, and not slave States ? You have been claiming your constitutional 
rights. Where is there a word about the equilibrium of the States in 
the Constitution? Under it you have equality of rights, but no right of 
equality in the number of States. This equality is not of aritlimetic, 
but of political ethics. The moment you claim equilibrium of States, 
that moment your honor is compromised and your loyalty to the Consti- 
tution is questioned. 

Do you say, " We will favor this protectorate if Tamaulipas and 
New Leon are included " ? Very well ; try that. I w ill vote for it, or 
vote to include any other State where you think you can raise coffee 
and sugar, and can outvie the North in the race of colonization and 
power. 1 will gladly vote for a protectorate over an independent federa- 
tion of States north of the Sierra Madre. 

Mr. MiLLSON. I "want to know under what authority the gentleman 



124 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

from Ohio represents soutliern gentlemen as desiring all these Mexican 
States? 

Mr. Cox. I have not so represented them. I say, southern gentle- 
man may not wish to take Sonora and Chihuahua, lest they might be- 
come ft-ee States, and not slave States. It was a suggestion made to me 
by a southern member, and I said to him, " Come along ; we will put in 
Tamaulipas and New Leon. We will link them hand in hand." For 
myself, I am willing to give protection to northern Mexico ; if not for 
annexation, for a free trade which wiU be of mutual advantage, and will 
be practical absorption. It will at least prepare these States for admis- 
sion. Let Monterey be the nucleus of Zacatecas, San Luis, Queretaro, 
Tamaulipas, Coahuila, New Leon, Chihuahua, and Sonora — all the States 
between the Rio Bravo and the Gulf of California ; all natural allies in 
the interests of the United States. Let theni' cluster in upon our ensign, 
not star by star, but in a galaxy. By tliat, you do at once what will in 
time be done by the natural laws of development. Besides, you raise our 
present feeble trade of seven millions to twenty-eight which Great Britain 
enjoys. You can thus enhance every inch of soil, and every shining par- 
ticle of ore in these regions. 

As to the question of protecting our citizens already in Mexico, and 
demanding reparation for wrongs done them, this should be a capital cause 
of intervention in Mexican matters. Senator Mason's bill is rightly 
predicated on this cause. If Spain could make the Liberals pay for the 
murder and spoliation of Spanish subjects at San Vicente, Chiconcuaque, 
Durango, and elsewhere, in Comonfort's time, why are we asleep over 
the rights of our citizens? I have before me a list of these claims, but a 
very imperfect one. Each claim is a casus belli. Here are some dozen 
cases of illegal seizure of American property. I saw it noticed that some 
eleven millions were already calculated at our State Department. We 
have grievances beyond money. The sentences in relation to illegal mar- 
riages are a wrong to those without the established Church, and degrade to 
crime the holy relations of parentage and wedlock ; the infamous surveil- 
lance of the post office over American letters, refusing to deliver even the 
United States consular correspondence, unless it Avere first inspected by 
Mexican authorities ; and worse still, the rude, cruel, and brutal arrest 
and imprisonment of Chaplin, Stocker, Ainsi, and Garcia, are enough to 
make the Ilaynaus of Austria pale beside the imbruted and unbridled 
scoundrelism of Mexican officers. The story of Ainsi, seized on Ameri- 
can soil, sixteen months in the prisons of Sonora, wearing tlie barra de 
grillas ; and that sad, saddest of all stories, the massacre of his brother-in- 
law, Crabbc, and his confederates, whose chai'acters have been blackened 
to rob their murder of its heinousness ; these should move the very stones 
to sympathy. 

In this matter the United States have but one duty. These sufferers 
were our citizens. Wherever that character of citizenship is to be found, 
the individual bearing it is clothed with the nationality of the Uiiion. 
Whoever the man may be, Avhether native-born, naturalized, or semi-natu- 
ralized, he can claim the protection of this Government. It may respond 
to that claim without being obliged to explain its conduct to any foreign 
Power ; " for it is its duty to make its nationality respected by other na- 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 125 

tions and respectable in every quarter of the globe." This doctrine was illus- 
trated in the Koszta case. What difference is there between a dungeon in 
Guaymas, where Ainsi lay in chains, and the Austrian brig Pluzzar, which 
held the body of the Hungarian ? 

The outrages upon our citizens are not confined to Mexico. In every 
Spanish American State they are common. In Peru, in Paraguay, in 
New Granada, in Ciiba, in Costa Rica, in all places where the slandei's of the 
Madrid press against the " peddling traders of the North " enter, we have to 
meet persecution, imprisonment, illegal seizure of property and person, 
and an unwinking espionage ; and that, too, under taunts more galling, 
because we know how easy it would be to punish sucli outrages. We 
should examine the list of claims on Spanish-American States to appre- 
ciate the divine forbearance of our inactivity. A settlement with Mexico 
would be a general settlement with Spanish America. 

This duty of intervention becomes at once imperative and dignified, 
when we remember that, by such an act, we do not only protect our citi- 
zens, but we save Mexico. We not only save her from Spain, France, 
and England, but from herself. This is no conquest of Cortes. It is the 
salvation of a ]>eople whose interests will be bettered by our aid. Without 
such aid, the fairest part of this continent will be a ruin — only the worse 
because, like the Pai'tftenon, its fragments will remain to show the beauty 
and richness of its former condition. 

In conclusion, the policy I have indicated with respect to this conti- 
nent, and the apphcation of which to Cuba, Central America, and Mexico, 
will be of such benefit to them, Avill enable us to conform to that law of 
growth by which alone we have become great, and by which alone we 
can become gi'eater. This is the policy of other nations, and they have 
met obstacles to accomplish it. We shall accomplish it, but we shall have 
them as our obstacles. England has swept with her power from the 
Shannon to the Indus. She should be content, as we are, to see her great- 
ness repeated in the career of her oftspring. Yet she daily calls our at- 
tempts to expand by the rudest terms. France has twice threatened 
Europe with continental conquest, and now organizes the Arabs of North- 
ern Africa, the granary of the Roman world, for her march upon Egypt 
and her domination of the Mediterranean. Russia, the great land animal, 
is piercing Asia at every vulnerable point, and is pressing for an empire 
of which there is no adequate prophecy in the Scriptures. Even Spain 
joins her arms and her priesthood Avith France, and is waging against 
Cochin China a Avar which her journals call the civilizing spirit of the 
age, impelling the force of Europe to break down the barriers which divide 
that race from humanity. 

Yet all of these nations, except Russia, which has ever been kind and 
tolerant toward us, are this day in league to prevent the stretch of our in- 
fluence over oxxr continent. England, holding half of North America, is 
jealous of our growth, and would choke us at the isthmian neck. France 
would crush out the sympathies of the Avhite republic of St. Domingo for 
the United States, by her Chevalier Reybaud, charge at Hayti ; and she 
used that burlesque of emperors and that ape of manhood, Soulouque, to 
Africanize the island, to overthroAV Santana, and to break down the 
Cazneau treaty for a free port and steam depot, and for advantages to our 



12G EIGHT TEAES IN CONGEESS. 

citizens in the mines, sugar lands, and mahogany forests of that island ! 
France again appears in the Sandwich Islands ; at the Isthmus, with M. 
Belly ; and at last in Mexico, aiding the Spaniards, and in sympathy with 
the Spaniards of Cuba, to foil us in every attempt to adjust our national 
relations with that country. Every steamer brings us a lecture from Exeter 
Hall on our slave propagandist fillibusterism. And may Ave not go for its 
commentary to Copenhagen, to Ionia, to Gibraltar, to Malta, to the Cape 
of Good Hope, to the Red Sea, to Jamaica, to New Zealand, to China, 
and to the rajahs of all India? Why, the British regime in India was a 
system of torture more exquisite than regal or spiritual tyranny ever be- 
fore devised. The Sepoys vainly tried to copy its atrocities. 

"Were we left alone, we might be content to let France alone. No 
American would whisper a " nay " to her making the Mediterranean a French 
lake. Her genius and vivacity can make its waves glow with the light of 
other days. That sea on which navigation had its bii'th — the maritime 
world of Greece, Carthage, Rome, Tyre, Sidon, Turkey, Egj'pt, Persia, 
Venice, and Genoa — ^the sea of Homer and David, Jonah and St. Paul, 
Ulysses and Neptune ; washing the base of Ararat and Olympus ; with a 
world's history on its bosom, and whole nations in its bed ; the American 
can well say, let its guard be the gallant sons of France ! He could say 
it without envy, and with heartiness, if France would keep her navies out 
of the Gulf of Mexico and the harbor of San Juan. 

We have made no remonstrance against/ England on her ceaseless 
round of empire — bloody, cruel, and rapacious as it has been, subjecting 
the riches of Asia to her commerce and her greed. We know thfe law by 
wliich these powerful white races move. It will be irresistible. France, 
England, and Russia are tending to a common focus at the Isthmus of 
Suez, as France, England, and the United States are at Darien. Start- 
ing from opposite points, extra-European conquest converges here. Eng- 
land seeks passage across Egypt or Syria, for India and Australia, and 
pounces on Perim at the mouth of the Red Sea, as she did on Gibraltar 
and San Juan. France, marching her army of Algeria, presses toward 
the prize to realize the great Napoleon's dream of Egypt, and urges her 
canal at Suez as she is striving to do at Nicaragua. Russia, semi-orien- 
tal, marches through western Asia and Persia down upon the confines of 
English power and French ambition, and finds her rivals in the field. 
What fine reproaches they can hurl at each other and at us for the lust 
of dominion, when they gather at this focus of former civilization ! What 
shocks of contending forces will there and then be encountered ! Let 
them come and strive. Let Russia push its caravans across the steppes 
of Tartary until the trade of Kiachta and Irkootsk rival that of Canton 
and Shanghai. Let France divorce Asia from Africa by marrying the 
Red Sea to the Mediterranean at Suez ; let England work its iron Avay 
to India from Beyrout to the Euphrates ; let the steam engine labor for 
the millions of Asia under any engineer ; but let America alone in her 
armies of occupation to open 'the Isthmus, and control the steam and com- 
merce centre of our own hemisphere. 

No change of dynasty, or of form of government, can check this ulti- 
mate condition of European expansion and collision. Such a change may 
affect the relations of these countries to ourselves. The illiberal policy of 



FOEEIGN AFFAIRS. 127 

France to this country may return to plague its inventor, the usui'per of 
France. I have never heard his hated name since the 2d of December, 
that I could repress the prayer, which now I pray with something of a 
Red Republican fervor, that France may have barricades on the Boule- 
vards ; the throne in flames, as that of Louis Philippe in the Place du 
Carrousel ; the dynasty which he seeks to perpetuate cut off", or flying from 
the rage of a Red Republic ; more citizens and fewer soldiers, and both fra- 
ternizing to the music of the Marseillaise ; exiles returning from their homes 
in pestilential swamps, amidst gay and festive welcome ; prisons break- 
ing ; the press free ; the Palais de Justice open, and the tri-color of a new 
Republic flashing from every part of France, and topmost on the Hotel de 
Ville, made sacred by the heroic eloquence of Lamartine. This would be 
a fit retribution from God for crimes and perjm'ies ; and not at all unfit as 
the reward of an intermeddling policy with the republican interests of the 
New World ! 

Let us be decided ! These European Powers cannot, and do not, have 
peace. The bugles of truce sounded at the conference of Paris. Heralds 
proclaimed peace in every capital. But the war harness is not off. It is 
burnished anew, and the weapons within reach ! England, trembling at 
the one hundred thousand soldiers across the channel, and the naval won- 
ders at Cherbourg, commences to build coast defences. Russia acquires 
Villa Franca, and stirs insurrection in Ionia against England. Mazzini 
issues his rescript to the secret societies and Republicans of Italy to be 
ready and one as the thought of Italy and God. The coin of " Emanuel, 
the King of Italy," is circulated through the peninsula. An actress moves 
the people of Venice to insm-rection by a recitative which reminds them of 
their patriotism. Austria arms, and Piedmont proposes to repel. France 
sends more troops to Rome. Austria growls. France obtains from the 
Swiss a strong strategic post, and Austria growls again. Naples insults 
Napoleon to please Austria. England writes bitterly against Naples, and 
does not spare the prosecutor of Montalembert. England shakes with a 
new reform movement — John Bright striving to Americanize her by pop- 
ular sovereignty. Turkey is unsettled in Europe and in Asia. Russia 
moves on, immense and great — the envy of all. A lighted match may 
flash this magazine into a terrific blaze, whose thunder will make all Eu- 
rope quake. The alliances of to-day, in Europe, for her own balance of 
power, may be dissolved by a popular breath to-morrow. As a conse- 
quence, they cannot be relied on to pursue us to any fatal end. 

Ah'eady England has pushed this alliance with France to its snapping 
point. The English people will not permit their aristocracy to carry it so 
far as to make it an offence to the people of this commercial nation. Not 
but that the English Government would like to aid France in checking our 
career ; but trade is powerful for peace, and peace with us means cotton 
in England. Let England find cotton elsewhere, and our Southern friends 
may be assured that her intercourse wuth us will be no longer peaceful. 
Gentlemen need not flatter themselves either, that cotton is their peculiar 
staple. Why is England trying every appliance to reach central China? 
To clothe in her fabrics the four hundred millions of Chinese ? No. They 
are thus clothed, and mark it, by nankeen, which is the stupendous growth 
of their own great central valley, estimated now to produce more than 



128 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

double the cottou raised in all our southern States put together.* This 
valley being England's, Manchester and Stockport can snap their fingers at 
Charleston and Mobile, and English audacity will begin a new career 
of rapacity and insolence toward us. Pier jealousy of us is intus et in cute. 
Our reliance must be on our own strength and growth. If we cannot 
enact the Monroe doctrine into international law, Ave can create and con- 
secrate it as a national sentiment. Let it be the national genius. Let it 
be the po^v^er of ^'lladdin's lamp. You remember the story. The old lamp 
from its friction evoked from the cave a mighty spirit ; awed by its teiTors, 
the poor youth only ventured at first to employ its powers in familiar af- 
fairs ; but gradually accustomed to its presence, he employed it to con- 
struct palaces, to amass treasures, to baflle ai'mies, to triumph over foes, 
to wield the elements of air, light, and heat, until, at the close of the story, 
the poor youth becomes the sovereign of a peaceful empire assured to his 
remote posterity I 

This story, Mr. Speaker, is the type of our political genius. By it we 
have fortified ourselves in our domestic interests. Our domestic and ter- 
ritorial policy is fixed under its guidance. It is the instx'ument of that 
progress which must keep pace with steam and telegraph; until we are 
assured of an empire with which kingcraft dare not meddle ; or meddling, 
find it a power to baffle its force of arms, and its fraud of diplomacy. 
"We have become a Colossus on this continent, with a strength and stride 
that will and must be heeded. With our domestic policy as to local 
governments established, we can go on and Americanize this continent, 
and make it what Providence intended it should become, by a perpetual 
growth and an unsevered Union — the paragon in history for order, har- 
mony, happiness, and power ! 



MEXICO. 

LAWS OF NATIONAL GKOWTJI — MEXICAN EECOGNITION — MONROE DOCTEINE — ^PROPHECIES A3 TO 
FRENCH INTERVENTION MANIFEST DESTINY EUROPEAN AGGRANDIZEMENT. 

On the 19th of March, 1860, Mr. Cox said: In speaking to the mo- 
tion to refer the bill and amendment under consideration, I premise that, 
before that vote can be intelligently taken, our relations with Mexico 
must be considered. If it be objected that this discussion is inappropri- 
ate on this motion, I say that the late news from Vera Cruz, before 
which Miramon is now hovering with his army, and the projected armis- 

* When this remark was made, Hon. Humphrey Marshall, who was a member at the 
time, and who had been our Minister to China, called it in question ; in fact, saying that 
cotton was rather imported into China. He had forgotten that, although along the coast 
England had traded her cotton off to the Chinese, the vast interior was not reached by 
trade at all. Since then, cotton has been struggling for his sceptre. His claims have been 
thoroughly investigated ; and by none more exhaustively than by the Hon. F. A. Conkling, 
from whose pamphlet I learn that China last year exported to England 399,074 bales, be- 
sides large quantities wliich went into the United States and France. This was in addition 
to the home consumption, as to which it is alleged that, " Every morning throughout the 
Chinese Empire, there are three hundred millions of blue cotton breeches drawn over 
human legs. Men, women, and children aUke wear them." 



FOEEIGN AFFAIRS. 129 

tice tendered by England to the belligerents, make it important that at no 
other point of the Mexican boundaiy should these relations be compli- 
cated. Mexicans and Indians are devastating the Rio Grande country. 
The Governor of Texas asks Federal aid. If it be not granted, he 
threatens to conquer a peace on Mexican soil. A war with Mexico, as 
its result, would not only embarrass tlie relations of this country with 
respect to the late treaty, but it concerns the honor and interests of our 
citizens commorant in Mexico. 

Europe has her continental politics ; America has hers. England 
sends ambassadors, and France armies, to Italy ; the one to foil Austria, 
the other to fight her ; and, both to rescue Italy, as well from her invaders 
as from her own immoderation. We have our Italy. Not alone is Mex- 
ico our Italy by her natural beauty, production, soil, sky, romance, and 
history, but Mexico is our political Italy. She is torn to shreds by those 
who are fighting over the parting of her garments. Such is the present 
condition of Mexico, and such is our interest in it, that we cannot be 
either idle or indiflei'ent to its fate. It is one of those cases of great 
public distress which lie at our very doors. We cannot avoid seeing it. 
It is in our palli, as an obstruction to our progress and a menace to our 
peace. Self-interest, if not republican sympathy, demands from us for 
Mexico our quickest heart throb and our most active intervention. 

Mr. BoYCE. Mexico is our " sick man." 

Mr. Cox. Yes ; she is to America what Turkey is to Europe. If 
she be not healed of her wounds and set upright on her progressive path, 
she will become not the "sick man" merely, but the dead man, whose 
very corpse will arrest our steps, taint the air, and poison our own politi- 
cal system. To save her, she must be inoculated with American energy. 
To save her ! — alas ! is she not already a wreck, Avhose disparted ribs 
and crashing timbers, tossed on the wild wave of anarchy, endanger the 
safety of her neighbors ? 

When the Spanish American provinces, forty years ago, revolted 
against their mother country, this nation inaugurated a continental policy. 
It bears the name of our most sagacious and calm statesman — the Mon- 
roe doctrine. It forbids European interference in the national affairs of 
this continent. That doctrine has, with the nations of this continent, a 
sanction equal to international law. It has done good service. Silent as 
the tides, yet as potent, it has swayed millions by its influences and efflu- 
ences. That policy can be amended and enlarged. From its serene qui- 
etism, silent emphasis, folded arms, frowning face, and warning gesture, it 
should be aroused to earnest protest and armed interference. So far as 
Mexico is concerned, this must be done ; if we do not do it, other nations 
will. As I have before said on this floor, if Mexico complete the suicide 
which she has begun, her estate will be left for administration. Shall it 
be administered by strangers? Shall it inure to the benefit of those who 
are neither akin to her by political sympathy, nor neighbors in interest or 
destiny? This is the problem which statesmanship is urged to solve. 

My solution, sir, is not new to this House. I submitted it, with great 

deference, in a speech on " territorial expansion" on the 18th of January, 

1859. I urged that our interest lay, first, in Mexico's erect and orderly 

independence ; and secondly, if that were not possible, then that no Power 

9 



130 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

6ut our own should guard its weakness and administer its estate. Since 
then, by the inexorable logic of events, my position has been strengthened 
and my conclusions confirmed. In seconding the views of the President 
last year, I urged that we had abundant cause for hostility against the 
Miramon government, then and yet holding the capital. I was ready to 
vote for any system of repi'isal to bring about a settlement of our claims. 
I was ready to give the Executive power to punish the atrocities vipon our 
citizens domiciliated in Mexico. 

I need not say how this programme has been carried out by our Exec- 
utive. It is now history. The President has pursued the wisest policy 
possible. He is clear now, and for the future, of all blame for these com- 
plications. A year hence, and his policy no one will question. In three 
months afterwards he recognized the Juarez government. This was the 
government de jure and de facto. This recognition Avas followed by the 
appearance of Mr. McLane and a naval force at Vera Cruz. This was 
succeeded by the advantageous treaty now before the Senate. If that treaty 
be confirmed, not alone will our commerce grow from its present languish- 
ing condition of some eight millions to some twenty millions per annum, 
Avhich it was in 1835 ; but the highways of the continent will be over 
Mexico. These highways will draw to them a by-trade of increased inter- 
course. They will inaugurate an enterprise in agriculture, commerce, and 
mining, "which will make Mexico as much a useful dependency upon us 
as ever India was upon England. 

What remains to be done to bring about a consummation so splendid 
on a theatre so magnificent? What remains to give us control from the 
Rio Grande to the gates of Panama ? Already the Central American 
imbroglio is ended. Great Britain has restored the Bay Islands to Hon- 
duras. She has, informally at least, relinquished the Mosquito protec- 
torate. Honduras and Nicaragua will then be independent of foreign 
intervention. New Granada opened her Congress on the last of February, 
I860, and we may soon hear that the Cass-Herran treaty is confirmed. 
All that remains for us is to give practical annexation to Mexico, as we 
have to Canada, by our reciprocal free trade. Cuba gravitates every 
year nearer to this continent. With the Gulf ours, from Florida all 
around to Yucatan, the key must be ours. A practical solution by us of 
Mexican politics will not be unheeded by the people of Cuba, and will 
compel a mutuality in commerce and comity between them and our own 
country. Then we make the northern part of this whole continent ours 
by every tie of interest in the present, and ours in the fulness of time by 
closer bonds of political federation ! 

I propose to show that it is absolutely necessary for us to interfere in 
Mexico ; demanded alike by national honor, by national interests, and 
self-protection. I wUl show that no interference can be effectual which 
does not look to the actual pedis possessio of the country by our troops. 
Either Mexico must roll back under the dark ride of brigandage, which 
creates anarchy for its own aggrandizement, or she must become Ameri- 
canized with a recognized foreign ruling elenient in the country. It is 
either annihilation or resurrection under our auspices. 

Take a glance at the condition of Mexico. If this glance does not 
suffice to arouse us from our apathy about Mexican affairs, we may as 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 131 

well yield our predominance at once on this continent, confess that Eu- 
rope is fitted to take care of this " New Atlantis," and that our schemes 
of commerce, progress, and empire are a failure and a delusion ! In ar- 
riving at the condition of Mexico, it will be necessary to epitomize her 
eventful history. I propose to do this briefly under three epochs. 

Mr. Sherman. I rise to a question of order. The only question 
before us, is the reference of the appropriation bill to one or the other 
committee. It is not in order to discuss the condition of Mexico in 
general. 

Mr. Cox. If the gentleman could know my speech from the begin- 
ning to the end, he would see that I intend to apply my remarks, in the 
end, to the question of reference. The peace of our frqntier is essential 
to the treaty and our other relations with Mexico. I wish the matter re- 
ferred tothat committee which will give it the fullest examination. 

Mr. BoTCE. I hope the gentleman will be allowed to go on with his 
most interesting and useful discussion. 

Mr. Morris, of Pennsylvania. The condition of our frontier opens 
up all our interests in Mexico. I trust that the gentleman from Ohio 
may be permitted to proceed. 

Mr. Cox. The first epoch is from the Spanish invasion to the revo- 
lution against Spain, in 1824. Much may be pardoned to Mexico, when 
we remember the heritage of misery which Spain left to her. Making 
every allowance for exaggeration, there is no doubt that the Spaniards 
found at the discoveiy a remarkable civilization. Whether it belonged 
to an ancient race or not, it was there, with its polity, its religion, its 
comforts, and its wealth. The highest avarice of Cortes, his followers, 
and viceroyal successors, was stimulated by its afiluenx;e. The same ex- 
traordinary efforts which were made to achieve its conquest, were em- 
ployed in draining the country of its resources. In this all-absorbing 
avarice — an avarice which had no limit and knew no mercy, Avhich was 
checked only by its glutted and bloated repletion — are to be found the seeds 
of that disease and disaster which now weaken, distract, and mutilate 
Mexico. The motto seems to have been : " Nada est mala que gana la 
plata " — nothing is evil which gives us the silver. Under its sway, the 
most unprincipled set of robbers, cutthroats, and intriguers were warmed 
into life. This heritage of avarice has been enjoyed, too, by strangers. 
The very ministers, as well as merchants, from aljroad, were seized by 
it. Their aim has been to watch for the advent of each successive power, 
» only the more readily to make profitable transactions with the gov- 
ernment of the day, and to provide for another chance with the govern- 
ment of to-morrow. As a consequence, the people, Avhose production 
furnished the means for this avarice, finally lost their patience. The 
Spanish grandees, the Gapuchins — less than one-fifth of the population — 
were the beneficiaries of these schemes. The Indian and mixed popula- 
tion was the source whence this barbarity, blood, sweat, and treasure 
were extracted. In 1810, the first revolt, under Hidalgo, took place. 
The cry was, " Death to the Gapuchins ! " A war of races began ; and 
out of it came the war of independence. This raged imtil 1821, when 
Itm'bide assumed the imperial robes, only to impurple them more deeply 
in his own blood. The axe which cut ofi" the head of Augustin I. — as 



132 ElOnX YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

he was called — carved out tlie Federal Republic, with Vittorla as its first 
President, in 1825. 

Under the second epoch, I will include all those vicissitudes of Mexi- 
can history until the formation of the new Constitution on the fifth of Feb- 
ruary, 1857, of which Juarez is now the constitutional President. Dur- 
inof these thirty-two years, there can be traced in perpetual array two 
parties. They were the natural offspring of the old and the new order 
of things. The Central, despotic, or monarchical party, which has had 
the wealthier, foreign, talented, and non-producing classes in its midst, 
are on the one side. On the other, is the Federal, Consittutional, or dem- 
ocratic party, which has had the native, poorer, and producing population. 
The Centralists have favored a strong government at the capital, where 
most of them reside, and where most of the wealth and educated talent are 
located. The Constitutional party disfavored all central influence as well 
as foreign ; strove to distribute the central power among the States, and 
to clothe with franchises the local communities. This party looked less 
to the aggrandizement of the few, and more to the happiness of the many. 
But it has ever been under a cloud. The power of station, wealth, and 
education has been brought to bear upon the numbers ; and the numbers 
have succumbed. The army, foreign diplomacy, and the revenue were 
at the call of the Centralists. They have aroused and used the prejudices 
of the people against the United States. They have agents now in Eu- 
rope, as I can show, trying to dispose of the sovereignty of Mexico. 
They have just made a treaty with the Queen of Spain. The Constitu- 
tional party have welcomed our sympathy and rejected foreign influence. 
Santa Anna, a miser, a soldier, and a scoundrel, was and is the repre- 
sentative man of the Centralists. Juarez, an Indian, a gentleman, and a 
civilian, is to-day the representative man of the Constitutionalists. I do 
not mean to say that these party lines are distinctly traceable throughout 
these years of Mexican independence. To an " outsider," these parties 
are but the hubbub, the " bullanga," of conflicting and quarrelling sol- 
diery. They are like certain rivers, which enjoy the light for a distance, 
and then disappear under ground, and again reappear, only to confound 
and vex the adventurer. But they are the same streams. A close anal- 
ysis will educe then- primary elements and detect their distinguishing 
characteristics. 

It is a mistake to call this contest a war of religion and races. It is 
a contest of principles. Indians and whites are upon both sides, and all 
are Catholics. The Church has as much to fear from the exactions of its 
pretended defenders as from their opponents. The United States only 
has the system which can guarantee to the Church its vested rights, if 
they are endangered by either party. It is no war of races. The races 
are too much intermingled to war. 

Of pure Europeans in Mexico, there are one-fifth 1,656,620 

Of natives or indigenous races, four-fifteenths 2,208,824 

Of mixed native and European 4,417,644 

8,283,088 

Of this number, at least nine-tenths are of the Constitutional party. 
The history of this era is but the placement and displacement of Presi- 



FOREIGN AFTAIKS. 133 

dents — the march and countermarch of generals. A President who is 
absent from the capital is compelled to fight his way back to the palace ; 
when once in the palace, he has no rest tiU he marches forth again against 
his enemies out of the city. The civilian has continually a sword in his 
hand and a foot in the stirrup. A junta meets in Puebla or Ayutla ; and 
lo ! a ncAv Constitution and a new Executive ! One day it is " Muera el 
General ! " the next, if he is not killed, it is " Viva el General ! " These 
vicissitudes have continued for more than a quarter of a century — nay, 
for half a century, from the first struggle in 1809 — with not five con- 
secutive years of repose. The fields of Mexico have been fertilized with 
the blood, bone, and muscle of her children. Intestine feuds, more in- 
furiate than foreign invasions, have disturbed her prosperity and broken 
her hopes. During this period, she was twice attacked by Spain, once by 
France, and once conquered by the United States. Yet, with her ma- 
rauding Indians, her thieving leperos, her internal feuds, and her foreign 
invasions, her energy has been wonderfully recuperative, and her resources 
Beem inexhaustibly bountiful. What might she not become, under a lib- 
eral protection given to her industry, her commerce, and her property ! 

Our third epoch opens on the 5th of February, 1857, when, at an ex- 
traordinary Congress, called for that purpose — and nemine contradicente 
— the present Constitution was adopted. Comonfort became its Execu- 
tive. His policy, which was that of a trimmer between the two parties, 
led to his vacating the post on the 11th of January, 1858. By the seven- 
ty-ninth article of the Constitution, the President of the Supreme Court 
of Justice became the President of the Republic. Benito Juarez then 
held the Presidency of the Supreme Bench, and became de jure chief ex- 
ecutive of the nation. Before Juarez could assume his functions at the 
capital, Felix Zuloaga, under the " plan of Tacubaya," proclaimed by a 
body of soldiers, who had the venality without the dignity of the Roman 
praetorians, usurped the office of President. Force drove Juarez from 
State to State, until he found himself compelled to fly for his life around 
the isthmus of Panama to Vera Cruz, where he now administers his office 
with a cabinet of unsurpassed intelligence and patriotism. He demand- 
ed the allegiance of the various States, and he received it from all, except 
a few in the valley and neighborhood of Mexico. I shall show that he 
still retains that allegiance, and that, notwithstanding all the changes of 
the contest since the summer of 1858, he is President in fact as well as 
in form. In November, 1858, Zuloaga was deposed by the same power 
which had set him up — a usurpation aided by mercenary troops, mer- 
.chants, and ministers. One of the generals, Miguel Miramon, young, im- 
petuous, successful, and more pliant to the purposes of the masters of the 
capital, supersedes Robles, who had for two days usurped the usurping 
Zuloaga's power. For the past year these parties have not changed their 
relative strength a great deal, either with respect to the various States or 
their military occupation. We have bulletin after bulletin announcing 
the Liberals defeated here, the Centralists thei'e. Miramon defeats De- 
gollado at Queretaro, but he loses, as he leaves this and that city behind 
him, in his forward march. When Miramon leaves Mexico to threaten 
Vera Cruz, half a dozen generals move tov/ard Mexico to threaten it. I 
said, a year ago, that Juarez had a majority of the States and nine-tenths 



134 



EIGHT YEAES m CONGEESS. 



of the people. He had more, and he has retained all that he had. Let 
me try and give a clear picture of this Mexican " situation " by figures 
and facts, corrected by close observation. From it, will be seen that Mi- 
ramoii is confined mainly to three central States — Queretaro, Puebla, and 
Mexico — with a temporary and violent occupation of a few places out- 
side. All the coast and frontier, Avith the custom-houses and ports, are 
held by Juarez. From these are the revenues. Thei'e are eight of these 
custom-houses on the Gulf, five on the Pacific, and eight on the frontier. 
No merchandise, silver, or bullion can enter or depart from the country, 
unless by smuggling, or by consent of the Juarez Government. Mira- 
mon is hemmed into a small area, and is supported, willingly, but by a 
very inconsiderable population. Let me present the condition of things, 
as they now are, in a tabular form : 





Population. 


Square Leagues. 


States. 


Population. 


Square LeagHea, 




Miramon. 


Juarez. 


Miramon 


Juarez. 


Miramon. 


fjuarez. 


Miramon. 


Juarez. 


Aguasealientes. 

C'oahuila 

Chiapas 

Chihuahua 

Durango 

Guanajuato . . . 

Guerrero 

Jalisco 

Mexico 

Michoacan 

Nuevo Leon... 


8bjp,6oo 

820,000 
1,520,000 

680,000 
170,000 


90,000 
70,000 
180.000 
160,000 
140,600 

270,600 

600,000 
150,000 
550,000 

400,600 


i,545 

8,324 
8,271 

1,733 
869 


3S1 

7,947 

2,598 

11,611 

6,744 

4,451: 

3,4.53 
4,216 
3,288 

3,9i4 


Sinaloa 

Sonera 

Tabasco 

Taruaulipas 

Vera Cruz 

Yucatan 

Zacatecas 

L'r California.. 

Colima 

Isle of Carmen . 
Sierra Gorda. . . 
Tehuantepec. . . 
Tlaxcala 




160,000 

140,000 

70,000 

100,000 

380,000 

450,000 

320,000 

12,000 

70,000 

12,000 

50,000 

90,000 

100,000 





4,690 

139 

171,940 

4,219 

8,501 

6,801 

8,862 

276 

607 

8,437 

1,742 

864 


Puebla 

Queretaro 

San Luis Potosl 


435 


3,990,000'4,564,000 


15,742 


99,200 



It will be seen that I have given Miramon five States of small area, 
but of comparatively dense population. I have given Miramon Guana- 
juato and Jalisco, because he holds their capitals, now threatened by his 
enemies. I have given Miramon Puebla and Queretaro, although Juarez 
holds some of the towns in each. It would be fair (especially as even one 
town of Mexico, Toluca, is held by Juarez, and as some towns in Vera Cruz 
are held by Miramon, and as he is beleaguering its capital by his forces) 
to divide these first four States between the parties. This would leave in 
the hands of Juarez, States having 5,235,000 population, and 104,435 
square leagues ; against Miramon, 2,705,000 population, and 10,507 
square leagues ; leaving 2,530,000 population and 93,928 square leagues 
in favor of Juarez, on a fair computation. But this geographical and 
popular element in his favor is utterly useless for government in a country 
where rapine is the rule and order the exception, unless Juarez is aided 
by extraneous force and means. I am assured of the fact that he is able 
to hold his own, including Vera Cruz ; while Miramon, since he has left 
the capital, holds it, if at all now, by a jirecarious tenure. 

We arc apt to draw our analogies from France, and argue that as 
Paris is held, so is France ; that the revolution of the capital is that of 
the empire. But the analogy docs not hold. France is a centralized 
Power ; Mexico is a federative Government. Our own nation will serve 
as a better illustration. It would hardly follow that a usurper holding 



FOEEIGN AFFAmS. 135 

Washington City and parts of Maryland and Virginia and Delaware, with 
no seaports, no custom-houses, no revenues, nothing but the regidar sol- 
diers of the District, could be called the Government de fado^ while aU 
the rest of the country preserved the form, spirit, and functions of the 
Federal Government at Cincinnati or New Orleans. Nor would the 
recognition of such a Government, by France or England, make it, de 
facto, the Government. In Mexico, France and England have hitherto 
held the Central junta to be the Government de facto. England, how- 
ever, is about to withdraw such recognition, inasmuch as she has found 
it utterly irresponsible, cruel, rapacious, tyrannical, and barbarous to- 
ward her own citizens, even as it had been toward American citizens. 
During this epoch, Mexico has had thirty-five Governments, and seventy- 
two Executives. Only two of her Executives have ever served a full 
term — Vittoria, lier first President, and Herrera, at the close of our war 
Avith Mexico. But these happy exceptions can hardly be called such, 
when we remember their perils and troubles, their antagonists with pro- 
nunciamientos, and their wars to put down insurgents. 

But it may be asked, " If the Juarez Government is so strong in the 
area of territory, population, sea-coast, and fi'ontier, why does it not 
vindicate its superiority by taking the capital and stopping these depre- 
dations on foreign and domestic interests, lives, and liberty?" This 
question deserves a fair answer. One answer is, that the minority are 
richer than the majority. It can buy the prostorians. The spurious 
Government is enabled to raise money, because it has intrigued with the 
French Minister, Gabriac, and with the former English Minister, 
Otway, who were the tools of speculators and bankers. Consequently 
avarice and greed have beaten patriotism and honesty. The national 
securities of Juarez go unguaranteed into the market, and bring only 
a nominal per cent. ; while the Central sbcurities, guaranteed by foreign 
conventions, enable that faction to borrow at a fair per cent. Thus 
have the Centralists kept up their army, corrupted leaders and gen- 
erals, and swept over the land, leaving behind them nothing but inse- 
curity, anarchy, and devastation. What towns or cities they hold is by 
force and fear, not fealty and respect. With all these advantages to the 
central government, the nation is not with them. The Constitutional party 
have been defeated at several important points, it is true ; in April last, 
before the city of Mexico, and in November last, near Queretaro. But 
they now hold all of the northern half of Mexico, and more than half of 
the southern portion. They have made themselves masters of the entire 
Pacific coast, including San Bias, which Miramon held for a Avhile. They 
have successfully resisted Miramon's attack on Vera Cruz ; and will resist 
successfully his present attack, if they do not also wrest the capital from 
him, while he is attempting to take Vera Cruz. This rightful Government 
will maintain itself in the field, as it can in the forum of the lex gentiu7n, 
against the incivism and outrages of its opponents. Which Government is 
the one for our recognition and support? That is easily determined 
from Avhat I have said. Mr. McLane, in April last, thus determined. 
He has given it a practical solution by the treaty now before the 
Senate. The present administration displays a wise, cautious, and just 
statesmanship, in urging the ratification of the treaty. It has been 



136 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

made with great care and anxiety. The President is reported to 
have said that the salvation of Mexico depends upon its ratification. I 
believe it, with all the earnestness of studious conviction. That treaty 
concedes to us a safe transit and right of way across Mexico on three 
lines ; one across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the other two from our 
boundary to Guaymas and Mazatlan. It authorizes us to lend the naval 
and military forces of this Government to the constitutional authorities, at 
their expense, in order to execute the treaty. Thus we are, in the lan- 
guage of international law, " souverains par indivis " with the Juarez 
Government, and with power to execute the right. This power, if exe- 
cuted, will end these convulsions of Mexico. By a territorial abnegation, 
Mexico has given us a foothold upon her soil which cannot be used but 
for her peace, development, and prosperity. 

If this House will but observe the articles placed upon the free list by 
the treaty, they will perceive the ample scope of intercourse which it 
offers to every part of our country. The Ohio farmer will feel it in the 
enhanced price of his provisions, as well as the planter of cotton on the 
Gulf, whose great staple will find a larger market. The iron interest of 
the Middle States, and the manufacturing interest of New England, are 
alike the recipients of its results. We may regain the trade with Mexico 
which we had from 1830 to 1840, when $46,000,000 were exported 
thither, against only $18,000,000 from 1840 to 1850 ! We will do more. 
Since- then, we have carved out an empire on the Pacific ; and the far 
Orient of China and Japan has given us treaties of interchange. Our 
commerce from Mexico, being unburdened with transit duties, will go 
north to our possessions on the Pacific, south along the South Ameidcan 
coast, and westward to this Orient — the golden Cathay of Columbus — 
where our enterprise can play upon every key of traffic and touch upon 
every spring of intercourse. Thus will be returned to Mexico, through 
our agency, that affluent commerce which, in her early colonial day, made 
Acapulco the Venice of the New World, and the stately galleons of Cadiz 
an armada which was the pride of an empire and the envy of the world ! 
That treaty to which I refer will be the respite, or rather the life warrant 
to Mexico. I trust it may be confirmed by the Senate, as it is by the 
good sense of the country. I am ready, as one of the Representatives of 
the people, to vote the $4,000,000 required to give us the foothold at the 
railroad oceanic termini. I look upon that foothold as not only preven- 
tive of all European interference, but, if you please, as the thin end of an 
entering wedge into Mexico. It is the herald to a circuit of empire all 
around the Gulf by a steam marine ; and to a coronation of new States to 
this Federation, whose wealth and brilliancy will far outshine the gold of 
California and the silver leads of Washoe ! 

It was urged as an objection against the acquisition of Texas that the 
commercial emporium of the New World would be transferred from New 
York to New Orleans. How ill-founded were these fears ! The freedom 
and expansion of our commerce and the acquisition of territory, have 
only magnified and glorified New York ; and a similar enlargement would 
have the same result to-day. New York is the nation's commercial cen- 
tre and heart ; and any thing that afl'ects her, affects the minutest nerve at 
the extremity of the Republic. If adversity visit the South or North, 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 137 

East or West, New York feels it. The present treaty would add another 
element to its wealth, power, and greatness. 

Two millions of the four are to be in trust for the satisfaction of the 
claims of our citizens against Mexico. These claims can never be ad- 
justed, much less paid, under either of the Mexican Governments, unless 
Mexico parts with some valuable interests, by which she can raise what 
ought to be paid to our citizens. 

It is a shame upon the American name among the Spanish repub- 
lics, that our citizens are utterly remediless for all their wrongs, suffered 
at the hands of these weak and irresponsible powers. Especially in Mex- 
ico have we causes of complaint for outrages the most atrocious and 
butcheries the most bloody and treacherous. In di-awing the picture of 
this mutilated Republic before an American Congress, the part reserved 
for the American citizen in Mexico requii'es the largest place and the 
darkest shadows. These outrages are partly owing to the false and pre- 
judicial statements everywhere circulated against our name, since the 
Mexican war, by the Monarchical party. Since the McLane treaty, these 
stories have received the rarest touches of Mexican braggadocio. As a 
consequence, the wildest denunciations of American citizens are indulged 
in ; so that no respect is shown, or protection given by any class, even to 
the official representatives of our country, where the Miramon Govern- 
ment predominates. Not even where the Juarez Government holds 
Bway is there that safety and protection to our interests demanded by in- 
ternational law. One year ago I was compelled by the facts to picture 
Mexico as debilitated, helpless, bleeding, dying — as a land of rapacity, 
crime, chaos, craft, license, and brutality ; indolence only active to wrong 
and industry quickened only to vice ; laws made for their infraction, and 
order established to be contemned. Mountain then cried vmto valley for 
relief, and from hacienda to city went up the wail of despair. This was 
unhappy Mexico, in whose fate no nation can ever have the interest we 
have, till such nation conquer us. I was compelled then to ask the 
question, llHio shall intervene f And now, with more earnest emphasis, 
I ask again : If we do not, luJio will intervene ? 

Since then, this picture has received fresh tints of gloom and more 
bloody hues of horror. It should be painted by a Ilerabrandt in chiaro- 
scuro. Let me hold it to the light, if it is not too appalling ! Vil- 
lages deserted ; citizens in terror and dismay ; farms in ruin ; the 
arriero no longer drives his loaded mule ; tlie vaquero finds no field safe 
enough for his lazy life, amid his herds and flocks ; families in mourn- 
ing, orphanage, and misery ; gibbets erected at each cross-road ; death- 
crosses lining the highways ; a torrent of blood flowing from cowardly 
assassination ; prisons choked with their rotting victims ; the leperos 
prowling for human prey ; guerrillas scouring the country ; and the ruins 
thereof only hidden by the rank weeds and luxuriant parasites which the 
rich land has produced as a garment to cover the shame, confusion, neg- 
lect, spoliation, and decay. Another year, and the skeleton Famine will 
stalk through this land. Since last year, the semblance of respect to 
American and foreign residents has been thrown off. The thin guise and 
specious pretext are no longer exhibited, as the apology for crime, rapa- 
city, and wrong. Do you want instances ? Read the cruel murder of 



138 EIGKT TEAES EN CONGRESS. 

Chase, to wliicli the President refers. What enormity can equal it in 
diabolical craft and cruelty? Go to Tacubaya, with that blood-spotted 
Marquez — the Nena Sahib of Mexico — as its butcher ! From that scene 
of cowardice and carnage, if from no other, rises the cry of vengeance 
a"-ainst the bloodhounds who tore from the sick couch of the hospital the 
humane American and English physicians, and, amid horrible execra- 
tions, -which made hell laugh, took the lives which were dedicated to the 
sublime and Christ-like duties of healing and kindliness. A brilliant 
young surgeon from my own district — a son of my Democratic prede- 
cessor. Dr. Olds — was one of the victims of that Mexican butchery, from 
which no employment, however benignant, could exempt the American 
citizen. " Were I a Mexican, as I am an American," I would, as the 
first act of returning justice and order, make inquisition for blood at the 
hands of these butchers of Tacubaya. Degollado, by his orders of the 
17th of April, recited these cold-blooded and merciless assassinations, 
and declared that all officers of the enemy, taken in arms, should be exe- 
cuted immediately. This is a bloody index to the character of the war. 
The superintendent of that massacre, Daza y Arguelles, happily for even 
Mexican humanity, was taken prisoner by Carvajal, in December last, 
was shot, and his disfigured body hung up for the Lootings of even a 
Mexican rabble. 

Lately, in the palace of Miramon, Marquez, while there as a guest, 
had the brutality to strike down the old French* lady, Madame Gourges, 
for enacting the part of Florence Nightingale at this massaci'e. This 
same Marquez has since been imprisoned, by the jealousy of Miramon, 
along with hundreds of others, but better men, who are now dying in the 
prisons of Mexico, or working in its presidio with ball and chain. It is 
to be hoped that Marquez will meet with his reward. 

Go to Zacatecas, where the central chief. Gen. Woll, has been imi- 
tating Coronada and Eojos at Tepic, by filching all the money he could 
from foreign merchants, and inflicting all the horrors he could upon the 
Englisli and American victims ! After imposing all sorts of new taxes 
and making the merchants, repay to him all the duties and taxes of the 
preceding thirteen months, he resorted to imprisonment and death as the 
means of enforcing his detestable avarice. He even threatened the British 
consul, for not complying with his demands. This same General Woll 
sends the conduda to the Pacific coast from Zacatecas. It has in its care 
some four million dollars, the hard earnings of English and American resi- 
dents. It pays the duty on its departure ; it reaches Guadalajara ; there 
Marquez robs it of $600,000, and justifies this grand larceny by the ne- 
cessity of his situation and his services to the cause of good government 
Meanwhile the other brigand, Miramon, decrees another forced loan — one 
per cent, more upon capitals, " jwr una sola vez " — only for this once, to 
lull the foreigner and tax-payer into the belief, that this is the last one of six 
compulsory loans since the third epoch began ! Englishmen, Americans, 
and other foreigners are forced to pay the expenses of the very system of 
extortion by which they are crucified between these thieves of Mexico. 
Take the best view of this anomalous condition of the two governments, 
which even confounded Lord Jolm Russejl. Juarez collects the customs 
duties at Vera Cruz, which Miramon pledges to foreign nations. The ex- 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 139 

port duty on the staple product, silver, is collected by Miraraon in the in- 
terior, and re-collected by Juarez on the coast. Neither government has 
the means to support itself without either spoliation or extraordinary ex- 
actions, or by the barter of vahiable rights and interests. 

Would that I could catalogue the crimes of this ciu-sed cabal at the 
capital! But where begin? Where end? Shall I begin with the mur- 
der of poor Crabbe and his companions? Or of Ormond Chase, by 
Marquez ? Or of the American officer taken prisoner with Alvarez, at 
Queretaro? Or the imprisonment and assassination of political offenders, 
by Corona, at Zacatecas, Cordova, Jalapa, and Orizaba? How can I re- 
hearse the robberies so common all over this doomed land ? The violation 
of flags of truce ; the destruction of haciendas ; the Indians flying before 
these rapacious soldiers like a herd of mustangs ? Or of Bombastes Cor- 
tinas, who derisively and defiantly steals the United States mails, and 
hangs them, with the riddled bodies of Americans, on the trees near his 
fort above Brownsville ; plays both judge and jury on American citizens, 
within eight miles of Fort Brown, where he lately made his ranch the 
nest of his robbers and their plunder? 

These are but isolated acts, involving, it is true, loss of life, liberty, and 
property, by Americans. But there are more important transactions, 
showing an overruling necessity for our prompt interference. Let me 
give you one. Juarez holds Vera Cruz, and receives the revenues. His 
government is not recognized by France ; but the French minister, Ga- 
briac, by threatening Vera Cruz with French guns, compelled Juarez to 
pay off" the French debt of §1,000,000. Recently we hear that an addition 
of $460,000 of this old paid-off" French-convention debt is to be enforced 
against the revenues of the Vera Cruz government. This addition is the 
result of Gabriac's reclamation for French moneys, stolen from the con- 
ducta by this same robber government at the capital, which Gabriac 
smiles upon. Gabriac and his bankers are to get their per cent., if he can 
only use the French fleet at Vera Cruz, while Miramon beleaguers it by 
land. If by French aid Miramon takes Vera Cruz, what then becomes 
of our American interests and citizens there ? Is it Tacubaya over again ? 
Forced loans, pillage, rapine, and murder? 

Already since Mii-amon began his march towai'd Vera Cruz, before 
he had reached the tierras calientes, the Constitutional bands were prowling 
through the central States, making reprisals upon the property of wealthy 
Spaniards and upon the conducta under the protection of Miramon's gov- 
ernment. Already the same scenes of a year ago, when Miramon threat- 
ened Vera Cruz, are again transpiring. Our Eio Grande frontier is deso- 
lated with fire and sword from Tamaulipas to Chihuahua. Texas, through 
Governor Houston, is asking the President for Federal aid to protect our 
citizens. He is eager to give peace to the frontier, and, by a practical 
protectorate, some repose and security to northern Mexico. Only last 
month, Chihuahua was overrun by one- of Miramon's genei'als, Cosen, with 
a band of pardoned felons. The grossest outrages on women and men 
were perpetrated. The Americans were driven out, and were compelled 
to lei^ve a million dollars' Avorth of property at the mercy of the robbers. 
They sent in vain to Fort Smith for our troops. Their authorities joined 
in the request for om* intervention, but in vain. Cosen, with a thousand 



140 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

cutthroats, is mar'cliing toward its capital. You can picture the pillage 
■which will result ! These are facts just brought to us by Mr. McManus, 
of iny own State, who was compelled to leave his home and interests in 
]\Icxico. And now, if Vera Cruz too is to be endangered, who is there 
that will not hail the star-spangled banner flying from the battlements of 
San Juan de UUoa, as a triumphant emblem of the \dctory of commerce 
and civilization over craft and barbarism ? 

Recently I have seen that the Miramou Government, in their stress, 
have put into the market a new batch of bonds. Mexico is to be saddled 
by this Government with ^15,000,000 more of debt, which, added to the 
$80,000,000 created in July last by Miramon's scheme, will make $95,- 
000,000 of paper debt foisted on beggared Mexico in five months. Be- 
sides this, there are millions of contracts and reclamations unsecured, 
arising out of spoliations of foreigners. To these is to be added the debt 
of Mexico, foreign and domestic, ascertained in April, 1857, to be $96,- 
801,275, of which $63,382,105 is secured by a certain percentage on the 
revenues of Mexico, to the English and other bondholders. Then add 
the millions on millions of ruin heaped on this country by these ambitious 
and rapacious chiefs, not alone for arms and equipments, but in the losses 
to labor and in the idleness consequent upon insecurity and violence. Put 
these all together, and see the rent land struggling and writhing and -wring- 
ing its hands in wailing and woe, and you have the poorest of national 
Samaritans, whom to go over and relieve is the highest duty of a Chris- 
tian nation. 

If our Government fail in its duty now, one thing wiU happen, and that 
is, the sudden apparition of Houston, with ten thousand Texans, in north- 
ern Mexico. Such movements are as irrepressible as fate. They may 
even be less responsible and more reckless than Houston's project. I 
know that such movements are now in process of organization. They 
may have a peaceful appearance. They are led by the " Knights of the 
Golden Circle," whose mystic '' K. G. C." has the magic of King Ar- 
thur's horn, which could not only call his thousand liegemen at the blast, 
but before whose blast the enemy fell down. Proposals have been made 
to Juarez by these adventurous spirits, and among the rest by General 
Reneau & Co., to place him in the capital and loan him $500,000, in con- 
sideration of the public lands to be granted in the States of Tamaulipas, 
New Leon, Zacatecas, Coahuila, Durango, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Michoacan, 
Gueri'ero, and Oajaca. This tender includes a further consideration in 
the form of surveying and platting for certain other public lands. The 
gentlemen in the country connected with these movements are men of 
military tact and approved courage. They profess to obey our neutrality 
laws ; they will not infract them ; but if they go into Mexico they will go 
as emigrants, on invitation, and carry the appliances of art, manufacture, 
and agriculture. [Laughter.] Of course, they cannot go unarmed to 
such a country ! They may reverse the millennium, and beat their plough- 
shares into revolvers and their pruning-hooks into bowie knives. [Laugh- 
ter.] Unless we give to Juarez that aid which the treaty provides, he 
cannot be blamed if he accept the offer of three thousand emigrants for 
each of the ten States, in consideration of the public lands of those States. 
It will be the ultima ratio Avitli his Government. He will be driven, by 



FOEEIGN AFFAIRS. 141 

our non-action, into the arms of the unregulated enterprise of this country. 
Can we lie supine while these transactions are transpiring? Can we see 
these martial elements, which are never wanting where adventure leads 
the way, combining for this purpose, without some action? Better far, if 
they move under the stipulations of the pending treaty. But if this he re- 
jected, better that the Government should order the regular army to this 
post of delicate duty, than that men should go out, even under invitation, 
in irregular and adventurous bands, Avithout responsibility. But if we fail 
to do our duty, we cannot reproach either Juarez or our own citizens. 
He will act on the old Spanish maxim applied to the native Mexican 
laborers : " Mai con ellos ; ])ejor sin ellos " — bad with, Avorse without 
them. 

Can we see external disaster and internal oppression fall upon this ill- 
starred sister Republic, and have we no protest to make, no protection to 
give ? France can throw her marine into the gulf of Venice, land her 
troops at Genoa, dash Avith her armies down the sides of Mont Cenis to aid 
Sardinia and rescue Lombardy. Half a million men are ready to cross 
bayonets at Solferino, in this cause of Italy ; but our nation — equally mar- 
tial if organized, equally sympathetic Avith the right, and having more 
interest in Mexico by far than France can ever have in Italy — must lie 
upon its back, and Avait and Avait for Providence to press betAveen its lips 
the fruits of our advancing civilization. "VNHien we fail to move, that mo- 
ment our destiny is closed. When Ave fail to meet the demands of our 
continental situation, and seize every rising opportunity of expansion, that 
moment of halt is the moment of retrogression ; retrogression is decay ; 
and decay is death. ShoAV me the code in the laAv of nations AAdiich would 
estop such an outgoing of national sympathy and succor. Has the com- 
mon conscience ceased to be a source of international laAv? Are the cus- 
toms of civilized nations no criterion for such enlightened action ? Consult 
your publicists ! They will tell you that Mexico, if a nation, is indepen- 
dent and equal to any other nation, and the judge of her OAvn actions. 
Very true. If she make an ill use of her position, she may be guilty of a 
breach of duty, but other nations cannot dictate, and must acquiesce in 
her conduct. True, again. Vattel rightly condemns Spain for executing 
a Peruvian Inca under Spanish laAvs, because he had oppressed and killed 
his own subjects. But at the threshold of this discussion the inquirer 
might well ask, " Is Mexico a nation now, in the meaning of international 
laAv?" Is Mexico " a body-politic, or a society of men, united together 
for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage by their 
combined strength ? " If that constitute a State, her condition is a carica- 
ture on nationality. Has she the capacity to preserve herself from insult 
and oppression, either internal or external? If not, hoAv can she perform 
her obligations to foreign residents and nations? Will the laAv of nations, 
founded on the enlightened sense of mankind, permit such a government, 
and a fortiori tAvo governments contending for supremacy, to outrage 
that justice Avhich is the basis of society and the bond of all intercourse ? 
Vattel, in his fifth chapter, section seventy, establishes the relation of such 
a State with foreign nations. Its appositeness to Mexico is plain and em- 
phatic. He says : 



142 EIGHT TEAKS EST CONGRESS. 1 

" If thei-e were a people who despised and violated the rights of others whenever they • 
found an opportunity, the interest of human society would authorize all the other nations 
to form a confederacy in order to humble and chastise the delinquents. We do not here 
forget the maxims established in our preliminaries, that it does not belong to nations to > 
usurp the power of being judges of each other. In particular cases, where there is room 
for the smallest doubt, it ought to be supposed that each of the parties may have some : 
right, and the injustice of the party that has committed the injury may proceed from 
error, and not from a general contempt of justice. But when, by her constant maxims, 
and by the whole tenor of her conduct, a nation evidently proves herself to be actuated 
by a mischievous disposition, if she regards no right as sacred, the safety of the human 
race requires that she should be repressed. To form and support an unjust pretension is 
only doing an injury to the party whose interests are affected by that pretension ; but to 
despise justice in general is doing an injury to all nations." 

If the Juarez government invite our cooperation, and we intervene, 
the right to accede to the request is perfectly clear. (Phillimore on In- 
ternational Law, vol. i., p. 443.) The treaty does invite us, in most 
unmistakable terms. But if the treaty fail, dare we promulge the doc- 
trine of intervention, irrespective of invitation? To the curious on this 
point I refer to the able treatise above cited, where the whole doctrine of 
intervention is considered, in the first chapter of the fourth part of the 
first volume. Among the causes given, where intervention is justifiable, 
pertinent to Mexico, are the following : where the peace and safety of 
the intervening State are endangered ; where parties to a civil war invite ; 
where citizens of another State require protection ; where intervention 
will stay the effusion of blood caused by a protracted civil war. The able 
jurist is reluctant to establish the last instance, as a substantiative and 
solitary, but only as an accessory justification of intervention. The par- 
tition of Poland stands as a spectre in his way ; and he starts back in 
affright at the abuses which so destructive a principle has fixed on man- 
kind. But he finds in the case of Greece, in 1827, a justifiable interven- 
tion. He displays the long-continued and horrible massacres and anarchy 
of Greece, as reasons " which alone, if ever such reasons could, jus- 
tify the interference of Christendom." The case of Mexico, however, is 
not to be determined by that elastic law of nations, which has proved 
so convenient an instrument for the oppression of mankind. In America 
we have a chapter of our own, written by James Monroe, and fixed as the 
continental policy of this hemisphere. No international law which omits 
this chapter, can have application to us or to our own relations with 
Mexico. But even the maxims of the Old World are warrant enough, 
if applied with discrimination, for our prompt intervention by actual pos- 
session in Mexico. 

Some there are ever ready to oppose every thing which looks even dis- 
tantly to the aggrandizement and extension of our Republic. I belong 
to that party which Choate described as having a " gay and festive defi- 
ance of foreign dictation ; " a party which does not go abroad for its rules 
of conduct. But if there are such who fear our advancement, to such the 
authority of foreign journals may be more impressive than our own rights 
and duties. To such, therefore, I quote the London Times, the thinking 
head of the English nation. It says : 

"The English residents who have cast their lot with the inhabitants, and the traders 
who have invested money in enterprises of the country, are in the same position as the 
Mexicans themselves. How can we or any one interfere but by taking possession of the 



FOKEIGN AFFAIES. 143 

country ? Of whom arc we to demand an explanation ? The chief of the Republic to- 
day may be a fugitiv^e in a week, while his rival steps into power and wreaks vengeance 
on all the late officials. Suppose we ask for satisfaction, who is to give it ? The outrage 
may have been committed by the other party, or by some independent ruffian hundreds 
of miles off, or there may be no pohce to prevent a repetition of the act, and no money 
to compensate it. In fact, where there is no settled government, the ordinary iutcrna- 
tional remedies fail." 

The London Times, in another article, used the following significant 
language : 

" Mexico has now arri lol at a point at which any convulsion may improve the pros- 
pect of her foreign creditors. In the present state of things they can have no hope, and 
their great dread, therefore, must be lest it should be perpetuated. If some new military 
dictator were to arise, or the country were to be absorbed, without more delay, by the 
United States, their treatment could not be worse, and it might, especially in the latter 
case, be much better." * * « " Let the United States, when they are finally pre- 
pared for it, enjoy all the advantages and responsibility of ownership, and our merchants 
at Liverpool and elsewhere will be quite content with the trade that may spring 
out of it." 

Since then, Mr. Matthews, the English Minister, has been compelled 
to protest against the government at the capital of Mexico, and he now 
threatens to leave it to its fate. There is only one remedy, it seems, for 
Great Britain and her citizens ; possession of the country ! She is will- 
ing that we- shall do that oiiice. Mr. Whitehead, the agent of the English 
bondholders, in a letter of the 26th of September, 1859, could see " no 
pacification, except by the intervention of some powerful nation ; " and 
he said further, that " the opinion prevails very generally, among the more 
sensible part of the Mexicans themselves, who, Avithout desiring annexa- 
tion, would be glad to see something of an armed intervention on the part 
of the United States." He more than hints that it is the policy of Eng- 
land to promote it. Lord John Russell, the head of the Foreign Office, 
in his letter of the 16th December, 1859, to the Rothschilds, seems to 
be hovering near that idea. He says : "A civil war rages in Mexico be- 
tweeu two parties, who, only intent on destro}dng their adversaries, have 
very little respect for the rules of justice or the safety of property." " Our 
Government has endeavored in vain to mediate, by the aid of other pow- 
ers, to bring about a termination of the present devastating and sangui- 
nary war." 

As we could permit no European nation to take possession of Mexico 
without dishonor, so we are bound to pursue this policy by a rule far 
more authoritative than any international law. Our code is the law of 
necessity. It is the same law by which we ought to save our neighbor's 
house, when its bm-ning would imperil our safety and destroy our peace. 
If we do not do it, what objection can we make if England or France 
attempt it ? "We must anticipate the else inevitable interference of these 
powers on this continent. If we do not interfere now, there wiU be noth- 
uag to save but a desolated land, a demoralized citizenry, an empty ex- 
chequer, a mortgaged revenue, a banditti of factious States, and a gov- 
ernment only federative in a league with death, murder, and spoliation. 

There is yet something to be saved in Mexico. If we act promptly, 
we become partners in her resources. What are these resources? What 
are, and what should be, our relations toward them? Mexico has now 
$26 000,000 of foreign imports, and $28,000,000 of exports ; making an 



144 ■ EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

interchange of $54,000,000. Of this, England lias $33,400,000 ; the 
United States only $8,700,000. England thus monopolizes more than 
one-half of this commerce. She has had special permits to import at a 
reduction of twenty-five to fifty per cent, on duties. She is twenty days 
distant by steam ; while on the Pacific and on the Gulf we are at the 
very doors of Mexico. Of the $8,700,000 of our commerce with Mexico, 
our exports for the year ending September 30, 1858, were but $3,315,- 
825, being $2,000,000 less than our imports from Mexico. The above 
fifty-odd millions does not include, of course, the immense contraband 
trade, which, if fairly estimated, would run Mexican commerce up to 
$100,000,000. Thirty millions of this is silver, which mostly goes to 
England. If the produce of our country — the provisions and flour of the 
great West, the varied manufactures of the North in wood and iron, 
which are finding markets in the West Indies, the shipping of the G-ulf 
and the Pacific, with six thousand miles of Mexican sea-coast, and the 
mining enterprise of our citizens, had a full range under a good govern- 
ment, with this reciprocal free trade, under this well-conceived treaty, 
what a tide of prosperity would flow between us and Mexico ! The 
princely city of London votes Loi'd Elgin its hospitalities, because he 
quadrupled the trade beween us and Canada by the reciprocity treaty. 
He boasted, in his response to the gratulations of the merchant kings, 
that his Chinese treaty, if carried out, would open to English enterprise 
a trade with four hundred million people ! Yet, at our doors, we neglect 
the rarest chances of commercial enlargement. There is not a product 
between our Mexican boundary and Panama which is not wanted by us. 
There is not a product of our skill and industry that AviU not find a mar- 
ket in that country. May I not be pardoned for illustrating this view 
from my own State of Ohio? Its statistician, Mr. Mansfield, in his re- 
port of 1859, estimates our grain product at an average of one hundred 
and twelve million eight hundred and eighty-three thousand eight hundred 
and seventy bushels. Where is the State in the world Avhich can equal 
this in these elements of life ? New York has but seventy-six million six 
hundred and thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ten bushels , fewer 
acres in cultivation, and a less average to the acre. France, with her 
nicety of cultivation, has but an average of tliirteen and a half bushels 
to the acre, while Ohio has twenty-two and a half. Gallicia even falls be- 
hind this model State of the Mississippi valley, where more people can live 
well than in any other land on the earth. The value of Ohio live-stock 
ranges over seventy million dollars, from which are made our smoked 
and salted meats. These Avould be duty-free under this treaty. Has 
Ohio no surplus for exportation? no interest in an extended market? 
If I summoned each Representative to lay before us the speciality of his 
State for which free trade is offered in this treaty, what a museum of 
national exchanges Avould we not show, to pour into the great current of 
trade which would follow its ratification ! What can Mexico give us in 
return ? Is it coffee and sugar ? Their consumption with us is now al- 
most as general as that of bread. Colima and the other Pacific States 
offer their rich coffee and sugar lands, unequalled by Cuba, and surpassing 
Louisiana or Texas. The present supply is inadequate to our demand. 
We pay too much for both. So with cocoa, cochineal, and the finer quali- 



FOKEIGN AFFAIRS. 145 

ties of tobacco. So, too, with the tropical fruits. Our iron, in all its 
shapes of usefulness, avouIcI have a fine chance in a country where, at 
times, it has been of equal value with the precious metals, and where, 
even yet, wooden ploughs perform the office in agriculture which we are 
beginning to perform with iron and steam. And yet you can buy to-day in 
New Orleans, thirty thousand Ohio and Pennsylvania ploughs at thirty-six 
dollars per dozen ! If we could have settled relations with Mexico, and 
if Mexico herself could be tranquillized, I doubt not that $50,000,000 of 
silver per annum could be produced. Four-fifths of this would come to 
us. Our mining interests now give us $120,000,000, with only twenty 
thousand persons employed. Think of such an enterprise applied to the 
silver mines of Mexico ! We need the silver to purify our specie currency 
of its adulterated silver coin. We have the quicksilver now in our midst 
to aid this production. We must change, by some new enterprise, the 
ratio between the production of gold and silver. The leads of the east- 
ern slope of the Rocky Mountains have already made that lonely land the 
seat of thriving towns and remunerative industry. That beautiful pla- 
teau, those affluent gulches, those seams of gold-bearing quartz, whose 
amazing extent and richness are described in memorials on our table, as 
lands which have never been equalled or even approached at any period, 
on the face of the earth, for their miraculous wealth — those rivers, whose 
sand is silver, and whose pebbles gold — are not merely stimuli to our 
enterprise, but they indicate, by their topogi-aphical and geological laws, 
and by their position as a part of the great range from Chili to Frazer's 
River, that they are the approach, the vestibule of that immense temple, 
whose sunless architecture has its endless colonnade and mystic cham- 
bers beneath our continental sierras ! From these sources Spain shone 
resplendent for centuries, and only and deservedly lost them because she 
lavished them on a corrupt royalty and to glut a base avarice. 

In Mexico alone, where these resources were only " scratched" by the 
rude science of the time, from the conquest (by official data furnished by 
the Ministerio de Fomento), we find a coinage of $2,636,745,951, figures 
under which the mind reels in its romance after the wonders of wealth ! 
Of this amount, $2,534,115,679 were of silver alone ! The gold amount- 
ed to $96,892,142. What a fruitage from these sterile mountains ! What 
apples of gold in pictures of silvei; ! No Yankee Aladdin ever had 
dreams to rival this arithmetic of ready and coined cash ! Quite a lot of 
loose change to chink in the pantaloons of Young America ! [Laughter.] 
And yet this land .of stei'ile sierras, with their untold coffers of wealth, 
has no parallel for the salubrity of its climate, the richness of its soil, and 
the balmy beauty and soft influences of its sky. Mexico has her Tierras 
Calientcs, her Tierras Frias ; but above all, her Tierras Templadas, 
which combine the virtues of all soils and the beauties of all heavens. 
Homer had poetic glimpses of such a land, when he thus depicted it : 

'• Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime, 
The tields are florid with unfading prime ; 
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow, 
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow ; 
But from the breezy deep the blest inhale 
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale." 

10 



14:6 EIGHT YEAES m CONGEESS. 

But alas ! civil discord is the serpent of this paradise. Anarchy, like 
the orange, is here in perpetual fruit and bloom. The murdered corpse 
is found beneath the palm and the cocoa. Here every prospect pleases, 
and only man is vile. If it be true that the weaker and disorganized 
nations must be absorbed and controlled by the strong and organized na- 
tions, and that nationalities of inferior grade must succumb and surrender 
to tliose of a superior civilization and polity, then there is no power short 
of the Almighty which can in time prevent the absorption, agrandize- 
ment, and elevation of this rich and lovely land by its union with these 
States of confederated and constitutional freedom. Give the United 
States, with its steam-engine, its unrest, its self-government, and its en- 
ergy, the protective control of these regions, and do you doubt that we 
would outstrip England in commerce? The commodities for interchange 
are ready. What we want is settled relations with Mexico. We want a 
steam communication on the Gulf, which will be, as has been proved by 
England in her relations with Spanish America, and by us in our relations 
with Cuba, the open sesame to the riches of this heaven-favored and man- 
cursed country. We expend our money in opening Japan and China to 
the world ; we send ships and embassies, and cultivate the humanities 
and amenities of the age, in persuading, astonishing, and interlocking in 
mutual interest the lands of the far Orient ; but at our very threshold we 
miss our golden opportunities. In the absence of a well-defined intercon- 
tinental policy, such as is proposed in the treaty and message, our intei'csts 
have suffered not less than $30,000,000 per annum. For ten years we 
have been struggling for a safe and quick transit to the Pacific in vain. 
Capital has been loath to venture, for the reason that no adequate protec- 
tion has been given in its use. Emigration has been meagre and un- 
certain, because there was no stimulus to labor and no certainty of its 
results. 

I have thus shown the condition of Mexico. I have given the reasons 
why some intervention should be had. There is no reason in the interest 
of economy and commerce, as indemnity for past wrong and security for 
future immunity ; in the interest of humanity and civilization ; in the 
code international or the forum of conscience ; in the decrees of Divine 
Providence, as He works with man in the order and happiness of His 
creatures, which does not appeal to us for intervention in Mexico. 

I proceed to notice some of the objections against the policy enun- 
ciated. 

1. Is it objected that our intervention, under the fifth and sixth of the 
conventional articles of the treaty, by force, will involve us in war? I 
believe their simple ratification would bring England into concert with us, , 
drive Miramon from the country, and, by such a partial intervention now, , 
save war and constant intervention hereafter. We must else contend 
with France and England, as to who will do this duty. We have the op-- 
portunity of assuring to Mexico the best liberal government which has yet i 
arisen. It is inclined toward us. Even Miramon, when protesting to us 
against the treaty, considers our recognition of the establishment, as he 
calls it {estahlecindento), at Vera Cruz, as a thing inexplicable to him — 
indeed, such a policy would have been utterly impossible but a few years 
ago, when Mexico lived upon the rant of the soldiery about the Yankees, , 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 147 

and before her statesmen had learned to understand our aims and 
institutions. 

2. Is it objected that this treaty will prevent annexation? Wliy, 
Fuente, the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, refused to sign it be- 
cause he feared to give away the sovereignty of Mexico ! How can these 
objections be reconciled? By a division of sovereignty. But what is 
Bovereignty without the concomitant power? What the empty crown 
without the head to plan or the arm to execute ? Mexico has the right, 
but not the power ; Ave furnish the last. If, then, it be objected to this 
treaty that it will prevent any annexation to thit:. country, because it ele- 
vates Mexico into the dignity of an assured independence, I ask, if this 
followed, would annexation be less desirable or less probable ? 

3. Is it objected that we have territory and people enough for our 
own happiness and contentment? If Mr. Jefferson had so believed, we 
never should have had our southwestern empire, with the Mississippi, 
holding by its mobile drops of water this Union in its steadfast poise. 
If John Quincy Adams had so reasoned, would not Florida still have 
been, as Cuba is now, a menace to our peace and a clog to our progress? 
Had Robert J. Walker and John C. Calhoun so believed, we never should 
have had the lone star of Texas on our flag and her territory in our 
Union. Had James K. Polk so believed, California would still have 
remained a paralyzed limb of the diseased body of Mexico. Had Pierce 
so believed, the Mesilla would still be a terra mcognita, and its mineral 
wealth would have had no chance for development. I have no fear of 
territorial expansion, sir, with the spirit of the Confederation preserved 
uncorrupted and pure. 

4. Is it objected that Mexico has not a population suited to our sys- 
tem of self-government? Had not Louisiana her French, Florida and 
Texas their Spanish, and California and New Mexico a population like 
that of Mexico ? Had not all our States their native Indian population ? 
These are becoming homogeneous with the lapse of time. There is no 
reason why, under our system of local self-government and Federal de- 
centi'alization, all Mexico should not live and progress under our Govern- 
ment, with the same success to herself and safety to us which these ac- 
quisitions have witnessed. 

5. Is it objected that already we have distractions and threats of dis- 
solution? Is it said that more territory would only add to our disquie- 
tude ? Is the slavery question to disturb us in the path of empire ? Are 
we to be hemmed in by fear of disunion? If this country, with its pres- 
ent Constitution, reposing on the intelligence of our people and the his- 
tory of its formation, cannot grow without danger, it cannot live much 
longer without gangi'cne and decay. If there be vitality to hold us to- 
gether, there is vitality with which to expand. Nay, without this expan- 
sion, decay is more rapid and disruption more certain. This country has 
settled one tiling beyond the power of politicians to disturb it ; and that 
is, that the Federal Government shall not intervene in the home aflairs 
of the States ; and that when they are in preparation for admission, no 
power but themselves, guided by their own wants and interests, shall, or 
of right ought to, prohibit or establish, or in any way control, their do- 
mestic institutions. 



148 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

Mr. Stanton. Has tlie gcBtleman read the veto messages of Gov- 
ernors Black and Medary ? Perhaps if he had, he would not regard that 
doctrine as the fixed policy of the country. 

Mr. Cox. This decentralizing doctrine makes expansion safe. If 
this be accepted as the policy of the country, expansion has no terrors 
which do not now menace us. Nay, an active outgoing policy would di- 
vert attention from internal dissensions. It would pour a vigorous life- 
blood into the older States. It would give activity to young and vigorous ,. 
States, which would hasten under our protecting JBgis. ^ ,|l 

I have no argument to make in an American Congress for or against *' 
slavery. Its discussion, in an ethical light, was exhausted by Aristotle 
two thousand years ago. The polemics of New England do no more 
than echo the words of the Stagyrite. They cannot add any thing to this 
discussion. As an economical question, if slavery could be made profit- 
able in Mexico, it would go there. It may, therefore, go to the tierras 
calientes. It never went there under Spanish rule, and cannot go there now 
for physical reasons. Mr. Greeley wonders why Mr. Buchanan should 
covet it, when its soil and production unfit it for slave labor ! He would 
wonder no more if he understood the Ostend manifesto in its comprehen- 
sive sense. It is no matter, in so far as it concerns our Federal unity — 
how much soever it may concern our ethics — how many slave or free 
States we have, so long as they are equal under a sacred organic law. 
Already the preponderance in favor of free States is declared. Southern 
statesmen like Hammond and Stephens acquiesce in it as a part of the 
law of emigration, locomotion, and population. Mexico would aggran- 
dize our slave States, if she would not furnish one from her area. Dis- 
similarity of States in production and institutions is a part of our system. 
Out of these brotherly dissimilitudes, as out of the vari-colored stones of 
the quarry, a fabric has arisen, whose harmony and majesty of propor- 
tion and strength are the wonder of art ! "With this as our policy, our 
territorial expansion is as illimitable as the continent and as safe as the 
stars in their appointed orbits. As safe as the stars : for they, too, like 
nations, are the efiluence of God, evolving and expanding through the 
universe by the everlasting law of growth ! They obey the same law by 
which the seed bursts into life, rises above the ground, effloresces and 
decays with perpetual bloom and sere. The same law of growth applies 
to our physical bodies as well as to the heavenly bodies. Without growth 
both body and mind decay and die. Growth is the condition of health. 
It is so with nations. History writes it on the frontlet of time as its fore- 
most, grandest conception. God writes it in the flower, in the globular 
water drop, and the star, as well as in Egypt, Rome, and Greece. In 
the feudal ages of darkness, and in the later ages of illumination ; in the 
eras of despotism, as well as of liberty ; wherever His finger records His 
fiat upon the everlasting scroU, there is this law : " Whosoever, whatso- 
ever doth not grow, is dead already ! " 

Is the Anglo-Saxon race an exception ? Is this great self-government, 
whose next census will show under its flag thirty-six million people, and 
an advancement greater than ever before in material wealth, to become 
the laggard of the century? Will the next seventy years witness the 
retrogression of this continent into anarchy and ruin ? Is Mexico's past 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 149 

thirty years the index to show how far toward the occulation is the orb 
of our destiny ? Or is Mexico to be invigorated and renewed by a new 
life from this race of ours? May not the mines of Chihuahua and Guana- 
juato be made to ghsten again under our energy ? Will not the valley of 
the Aztecs again blossom as the rose, under a better dispensation of civil 
rights and social order? May not those mysterious palaces, buried deep 
in the solitudes of Yutacan, whose sculptured facades Stephens desired to 
rescue from destruction, again resound with the voice of life and bless- 
ing? May not the fisheries of the California Gulf become the source of 
a new trade, and its pearls deck the diadem of a new empu'e? These 
may be dreams, but I have yet to see the American who will not say that 
at some time and in some emergency the United States will " have to take 
charge " of Mexico, and, if necessary, gather up her mutilated members, 
and, by the charm of our polity, fit them to each other — articulation, ten- 
don, muscle, bone, and sinew — and breathe into the form the soul of an 
active and benignant juvenescence ! 

If any Power interfere in Mexico, it must be either France, Spain, 
England, or the United States. The interference of Spain would only 
renew, with tenfold force, the antagonisms which now beset Mexico. Do 
we want England to make another Canada on our south ; to hold us within 
her iron vice ? But England has expressed the wish that we should in- 
terfere. The late accomplished Colonial Minister, Sir Edward Bulwer 
Lytton, gave voice to the best sentiment of the proud British mind, in the 
conclusion of his speech for the estabhshment of the British Columbia 
Government, on the 8th of July, 1858, when he said : 

" I conclude, sir, with an humble trust, that the Divine Disposer of all human events 
may atford the safeguard of His blessing to our attempt to add another community of 
Christian freemen to those by which Great Britain confides the records of her empire, 
not to pyramids and obeUsks, but to States and Commonwealths, whose history will be 
written in her language." 

Some of England's statesmen have taunted us with having no foreign 
policy. We deserved the taunt. If rightly understood, England, sir, has 
nothing but pride in these outgrowths of her own strength ; and she will 
have no protest to make against the honor and advancement of her own 
ofispring. Laying England and the United States aside, what would be 
the result of a French interference ? Not very remotely, a war of races 
for supremacy, not alone in Mexico, but on this continent. The Latin 
race and the Anglo-Saxon race cannot expand here without collision. The 
Anglo-Saxon, or rather the Anglo-American race, which is the best de- 
velopment of the Teutonic and Celtic, for adventure, enterprise, and mal"- 
tial success, has already combined the white races in America north of 
Mexico into liberal governments. History shows that that race has no 
returning footstep in its advancement. Is it desirable to array these ele- 
ments here, in the face of this indomitable race? 

An intervention by us, supporting a liberal Government like that of 
Juarez, which offers us free and safe intercourse, emigration, and religious 
toleration, with a stipulation by which our ai-ms can be called in to crush 
anarchy and enforce order, is the only mode by which jealousy can be 
avoided and order established. A suffrage by which the felon and the in- 
ferior races of Mexico are restricted for a decade, would stay Mexico 



150 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGKESS. 

from an inevitable relapse into barbarism, and, at the same time, by en- 
hancing property and promoting prosperity, reconcile every impatient ele- 
ment in Mexico to our salutary protectorate. 

A year ago, when I suggested to this Congress that the juncture was 
upon us when we should stop marking time, and begin moving forward, 
and that Congress was not up with the enterprise of the nation, the Madrid 
and Paris presses did me the honor to translate my speech, and to give it 
more importance than it merited, as the expression of what La Cronica 
newspaper was pleased to call the impetuosity of La Joven America. It 
expressed its amazement at the simple remark, " that, if we consider just 
now the elements of our people — martial, mechanical, intellectual, agri- 
cultural, and political — who will doubt that there are a dozen locomotive 
republics already fired up and ready for movement?" But, Mr. Speaker, 
I put it to the members of this House, whether there be one here who 
cannot say, that at least one regiment combining such elements can be 
mustered in each of the two hundred and thirty-seven districts of the Uni- 
ted States? If legal sanction were given, either by the repeal of the neu- 
trality laws or by some other Government al action, quadruple this number 
could be raised before the telegraph had finished clicking the inspiring in- 
telUgence. That this is so, we cannot help. We should not desire to re- 
press, only to restrain it. However much our caution may condemn and 
guard these elements, there is not an AmeriPan who does not cherish a 
lurking, smiling approbation of this adventurous and elastic spirit which 
thrills the great nation of the New World ! Call it what you will — mani- 
fest destiny, territorial expansion, star of empire, La Joven America^ and 
even fillibusterism — it is here. We must make the best of it. If its 
current be not properly restrained within its banks, if we neglect, despise, 
or unduly repress it, it will only spend its force violently and disastrously, 
when once it takes its destined way ! 

Is there any American who wishes to consult European Powers as to 
the propriety or policy of such an expansion ? Is there any one who fears 
a fatal blow from these Powers? We do not exist by the sufferance of 
Europe, but by its insufferance. We did not grow to our present great- 
ness by its fostering care ; but by its neglect, and in spite of its malevo- 
lence. We do not ask its pardon for being born, nor need we apologize 
to it for growing. It has endeavored to prevent even the legitimate ex- 
tension of our commerce, and to confine us to our own continent. But if 
we can buy Cuba of Spain, it is our business with Spain. If we have to 
take it, it is our business with Providence. If we must save Mexico, and 
make its weakness our strength, we have no account to render unto 
Europe or its dynasties. A year ago, in glancing at European politics, I 
foresaw the portentous storm of the coming war. Scarcely had my lan- 
guage been published, before the balance of power quivered over Europe, 
and snapped like brittle glass, at an imperial yet sinister New Year's greet- 
ing in the Tuileries to the Austrian Minister. Soon the sword of Napo- 
leon was thrown into the scales of Italian independence ! The treaties of 
1814 fell. The alliances of one year ago were blown into fragments from 
the rifled cannon of Solferino. As a consequence of this condition, not 
yet settled, all such alliances cannot be relied on to pursue us to any fatal 
end on this continent. 



FOREIGN ATFAIES. 151 

If European Powers choose to expand tlieir empire and energize their 
people, Ave have no protests, no arms to prevent them. England may 
push from India through the Himalayas to sell her calicoes to the number- 
less people of Asia, and divide with France the empires of India, Burmah, 
and China. Civilization docs not lose by their expansion. Russia may 
push her diplomacy upon Pekin, and her armies through the Caucasus, and 
upon Persia and Tartary ; she may even plant her Greek cross again on 
the mosque of St. Sophia, and take the Grecian Levant into her keeping 
as the head of its Church and civilization. France may plant her forta 
and arts upon the shores of the Red Sea ; complete the canalization of 
Suez ; erect another Carthage on the shores of the Mediterranean ; bind 
her natural limits from Mont Blanc, in Savoy, to Nice, upon the sea. 
Sardinia may become the nucleus of the Peninsula, and give to Italy a 
name and a nationality. Even Spain, proud and poor, may fight over 
again in Africa the romantic wars with the Morescoes, by Avhich she edu- 
cated that chivalry and adventure, which three centui-ies ago made her 
the mistress of the New World. She may demand territory of Morocco, 
as idemnity for the Avar. America has no inquiry to make, no protocol to 
sign. These are the moA'ements of an acti\-e age. They indicate health, 
not disease — groAvth, not decay. They are links in the endless chain of 
Providence. They proA'e the mutability of the most imperial of human 
institutions ; but, to the philosophic observer, they move by a lavv as fixed 
as that Avhich makes the decay of autumn the herald of spring. They 
obey the same law by Avhich the constellations change their places in the 
sky. Astronomers tell us that the " southern cross," Avhich guarded the 
adventurer upon the Spanish .main four centuries ago, and Avhicli noAv can 
be seen, the most beautiful emblem of our salvation, shining down through 
a Cuban and Mexican night — just before the Christian era glittered in 
our northern heavens ! The same great will, which knows no North 
and no South, and Avliich is sending again, by an irreversible law, the 
southern cross to our northern skies, on its everlasting cycle of emigi-ation — 
does it not control the revolutions of nations, and the vicissitudes of em- 
pires? The Aery stars in their courses are "Knights of the Golden 
Circle," and illustrate the record of human advancement. They are the 
type of that territorial expansion from Avhich this American continent 
cannot be exempted without annihilation. The finger of Providence 
points to our nation as the guiding star of this progress. Let him who 
would either dusk its radiancy, or make it the meteor of a moment, cast 
again with nicer heed our nation's horoscope. 



HAYTI AND LIBERIA. 

COMMERCIAL QUESTIONS MORE IMPORTANT THAN RECOGNITION — BLACK REPUBLICS — NEGRO 
EQUALITY COLONIZATION. 

Delivered in the House of Eepresentatives June 2, 1862. 

Mr. Cox. I propose, in the fcAV remarks Avhich I shall make, to give 
eomethiug in brief of the history, condition, and commerce of Hayti and 
Liberia. 



152 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

As far as relates to tlie history of Hayti, the very events by which it 
is marked, not only during the existence of slavery but since emancipation 
in 1793, show the inferior state of its civilization, and especially of its 
present negro rulers. From its discovery by Columbus in 1492, and the 
subsequent foundation of St. Domingo by the Spaniards, until its pillage 
in 158G by the British Admiral Drake, devastation and the extermination 
of the aborigines by their former rulers appear to have been the only 
work. Hayti then fell partly under the power of French fiUibusters, who, 
in 1G30, took entire possession of and colonized the western portions of 
the island. The colony was I'ccognized by France in 1677 ; and in 1697, 
at the congress of Ryswick, the French possession thereof was sanctioned 
by Spain, England, and Holland. From that period up to 1789, a period 
of ninety-two years, during which the French ruled, Hayti increased both 
in population and in commerce, and the statistics of the latter year bring 
the exports for the same at the high figure of 205,000,000f. (nearly $48,- 
000,000). But the rude treatment of the slaves during this period ripened 
into revolution. Foi'getting the unsuccessful attempt at rebellion of 1722, 
they rose en masse against their French masters in 1791, under the leader- 
ship of one Bonkman. After committing all sorts of atrocities, they com- 
pleted their work by a massacre of all the white race, June 23, 1793, 
under Mayaca, another black chief. In 1794, France appointed Tous- 
saint L'Ouverture, a negro, general-in-chief of the Haytien troops. This 
is the negro whom Wendell Phillips thought equal, if not superior, to 
George Washington. In 1795 Spain ceded to France the east part of the 
island. Soon after Toussaint declares the island independent. In 1802 
the French General Leclerc, with twenty thousand French troops, lands 
at St. Domingo, surprises and makes Toussaint prisoner, and sends him 
to France. In the following year Dessalines, another negro chieftain, 
leads the blacks, beats the French, and drives off the island Rochambeau, 
Leclerc's successor, who is thereby compelled to surrender to the British 
fleet. After this Dessalines assumes imperial powers over the island, 
under the name of " James I." In 1806 he is assassinated, and, after 
Petion's and Christophe's quarrels for the possession of the throne up to 
1820, one Boyer assumes the power, and is proclaimed in 1822. France 
recognizes the independence of the island in 1825, and receives an indem- 
nity of 150,000, OOOf. therefor. In 1843 Boyer is accused of tyranny and 
deposed. Herard succeeds him ; then Guerrier, in 1844 ; then Pierrot, 
in 1845 ; then Riche, in 1846 ; and then Soulouque, in 1847. While the 
negro presidents were thus succeeding one another, St. Domingo secedes 
in 1844, and constitutes itself an independent republic, imder President 
Pedro Santana. France recognized the new republic in 1848 ; England 
in 1850. In 1849, August 26, Soulouque becomes Emperor, under the 
name of Faustin I. On December 22, 1858, a new revolution arises, led 
by Fabre GefFrard. On the 15th of January, 1859, Soulouque abdicates, 
and Geffrard is proclaimed President the same day. On March 18, 1861, 
St. Domingo asks to be annexed to Spain, and the request is granted by 
the queen on the 20th of the following May. The portion of the island 
thus annexed to Spain is by far the largest, though less populated. The 
Gotha Almanac gives it an area of 12,960 square miles ; but from recent 
admeasurement by a French oflicer, it appears to Have about 15,000 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 163 

square miles, having a population of little over 200,000. The republic 
of Hayti has an area of 9,000, and by recent measurement 10,000 square 
miles, with a population of 560,000 inhabitants. Its revenue in 1859 was 
$1,762,500; expenditure, $972,572; debt to France, 60,000,000f. (about 
$11,250,000), the original debt of 150,000,000f. having been greatly 
reduced. 

In the Commercial Relations for 1860, page 701, our commerce with 
Hayti is set dowTi for all the ports. I know my friend from Massachu- 
setts relies on a statement inserted in the speech of Senator Sumner ; and 
it is said to be made out in the Treasury. I greatly distrust any thing in 
the shape of figures about Hayti. There are money sharks about ready 
to trade in the business of shipping our negroes thither ; and theii' motives 
for making figures are not always the most unselfish. 

In his pamphlet speech, Mr. Sumnek gives the sums of $2,673,682 
for one year's exports, and $2,062,723 for imports during the same period, 
ending September, 1860. There is a large mistake certainly in the im- 
ports here. The last returns of the general commerce of Hayti for 1859 
give the following figures, viz. : Imports 9,000,000 Prussian thalers, little 
over $6,000,000 ; exports 12,000,000 thalers. The number of vessels 
employed in that trade was 310, measuring 61,420 tons, and of these 
152 were American, 56 English, 54 French, and the other 48 of all na- 
tions. When we compare these figures with those shown in the returns 
of 1789, at which period the exports alone reach the sum of 205,000,000f. 
(about $48,000,000), we cannot help admitting the deteriorated state of 
the industrial capacities of the black Haytiens. 

In relation to Liberia, the books of geography and statistics give the 
following information : Area about 25,000 square miles, population 200,- 
000, colony founded in 1821 ; the territory purchased from the aborgines. 
Over twenty small sovereignties were thus extinguished. The declaration 
of independence and political existence as a Goverment dates in 1847, at 
which period they adopted a constitution somewhat similar to ours. They 
elect their president for two, their senators for four, and their representa- 
tives for tAvo years. AU men who o"\vn real estate to the amount of thirty 
dollars are electors. Their revenue is derived from duty on imports and 
the sale of public lands. These are sold at from fifty cents to one dollar and 
a quarter per acre. Their capital is Monrovia, besides which they have 
eight small towns and several minor settlements. The produce so far has 
been ivory, palm oil, common gold dust, coffee, sugar, cocoa, cotton, in- 
digo, ginger, and arrow root. Horses and other draught animals do not 
prosper, and goods are brought on men's backs from long distances. The 
climate so far has been unhealthy. Communications, except by water be- 
tween the sea-ports, are difficult fi'om the absence of roads. 

In Commercial Relations for 1860, page 680, I find the navigation 
and commerce of the United States with Monrovia during the four quar- 
ters ending September, 1860, to be as follows : exports $158,735.70, im- 
ports $126,276.59. 

If there is any commerce with other ports of Liberia, it is not shown. 
In the pamphlet speech made by Mr. Sumner on this bill, the exports to 
Monrovia are brought up to $200,000, and to the whole republic, to 
$400,000 ! Quite in contrast with the above statement. 



154 EIGHT YEAE8 IN CONGRESS. 

England recognized the republic of Liberia in 1848, and France in 
1854. From the late reports of the Colonization Society, it would seem 
that Spain and other Powers have since done the same, as I propose to do it 
commercially. According to the Gotha Almanac, the three Powers first 
named have each a consul at Monrovia. The United States have a vice 
commercial agent at Monrovia and one at Gaboon. Liberia has nine con- 
suls in England, and one or two in each of the other countries above, except 
the United States. Since 1821, the republic has extended its limits, and it 
must therefore have over 30,000 square miles. Its population are emi- 
grants from this country. They have been slaves here. They do not 
exceed 15,000. The savage population is over 200,000. From its social 
relations with the neighboring negro tribes, it exercises quite an influence 
over nearly two millions of souls. Its geographical position and its capacity 
of producing many articles make its prospects bright, and it can be 
looked upon as a centre from which improvement may diverge. As a 
sort of appanage of the United States, I would not discourage its progress. 
Nor do I believe the best friends of Liberia wish to see it made the abo- 
lition foot-ball in this House for party ends. Those who now seek to 
make Liberia the instrument for forcing their doctrines of equality, have 
not heretofore been friends to the colony and its objects. 

The question occurs with reference to both Hayti and Liberia, whethef 
we cannot with the aid of commercial agents and consuls, and without 
the aid of ministers resident, assist in the development of the prosperity 
and trade of these countries. 

This is the sincere desire which I had in offering my substitute ; 
therefore I will not controvert any statement as to the commerce of 
these countries. Be it great or small, I would foster it. 

But, Mr. Speaker, it matters not how much our commerce is with 
these countries, that commerce is not to be increased and fostered by the 
mode proposed by the gentleman from Massachusetts. The object sought 
by the gentleman ffom Massachusetts in this bill is not so much to in- 
crease the commercial relations of the United States with the countries 
named as to give a sort of dignity and equality to these republics, because 
they are black republics. It is, therefore, literally a Black Republican 
measure, and that is all there is in it. If the gentleman really wants to 
enlarge our commercial relations with them, my amendment will answer 
that purpose. It will be most effectual, because consuls general invested 
with the power to make treaties will answer every commercial purpose. 
The idea seems to prevail with the gentleman that no one can make a 
treaty or foster commerce between nations except a minister resident. 
Now, sir, the very origin and intention of the consular office and his func- 
tion arc to protect commerce. That is his special business ; and while we 
may also authorize consuls general to make treaties, and exercise other 
diplomatic functions, still commerce is his sole object and aim. It is not 
worth while to say that our consuls in foreign countries cannot make 
treaties ; that they are not clothed with diplomatic functions. If this be 
so, my amendment proposes to give them whatever power they may re- 
quire fo4- that purpose. It is very well known that our consul at Japan, 
Townsend Harris, and while consul, made a treaty between that empire 
and the United States, nor do I know that special poAvers had to be cou- 



rOEEIGN AFFAIKS. 155 

ferred upon him. In the Statutes at Large for the Thirty-sixtli Congress, 
page 99, is to be found the treaty which was made between Japan and 
the United States. It was made in the city of Yedo, Japan, on the 29th 
of July, 1858, and was ratified by the President and the Senate in 1860. 
It is signed by Townsend Harris, " consular agent for Japan, on the par- 
of the United States of America," and by the proper officers on the part 
of his majesty the Tycoon, and the empire of Japan. The House vvill see 
from this instance that these consular agents can not only make treaties, 
but that they are much more likely than ministers to foster and increase 
commerce with foreign nations. It is their duty to watch over and protect 
commerce. They have connection with merchants. They are sometimes 
selected because they are merchants, while ministers resident too often are 
selected because they are noisy politicians. If we look abroad into the 
second-class missions of Europe, we see them lounging about the cafes in 
the continental cities or swelling in grandeur through the effete republics 
of South America, doing very little, if any thing at all, to promote foreign 
commerce with the United States. Therefore all this argument in rela- 
tion to the amount of commerce between this country and Liberia and 
Hayti goes for nothing, so far as this recognition is concerned. All this 
talk of commerce is a mere pretext ; consular agents may not only do the 
duties which are proposed in this instance, but they are especially made 
the guardians of such interests. I Avill refer to Vattel on this point. 
On pages 147 and 148 he uses the following language : 

"Among the modern instiutions for the advantage of commerce, one of the most use- 
ful is that of consuls, or persons residing in the large trading cities, and especially the 
sea-ports, of foreign countries, with a commission to watch over the rights and privileges 
of their nation, and to decide disputes between her merchants there. When a nation 
trades largely with a country, it is requisite to have there a person charged with such a 
commission ; and, as the State which allows of this commerce must naturally favor it, for 
the same reason, also, it must admit the consul." ****** 

" The consul is no public minister (as will appear by what we shall sny of the charac- 
ter of ministers in our fourth book), and cannot pretend to the privileges annexed to such 
character. Yet, bearing his sovereign's commission, and being in this quality received by 
the prince in whose dominions he resides, he is, in a certain degree, entitled to the pro- 
tection of the law of nations. The sovereign, by the very act of receiving him, tacitly 
engages to allow him all the liberty and safety uece?sary to the proper discharge of his 
functions, without which the admission of the consul would be nugatory and delusive." 

" And, though the importance of the consular functions be not so great as to procure 
to the consul's person the inviolabihty and absolute independence enjoyed by public minis- 
ters, yet, being under the peculiar protection of the sovereign who employs him, and in- 
trusted with the care of his concerns, if he commits any crime, the respect due to his 
master requires that he should be sent home to be punished." 

For the privileges of consuls with reference to commerce, their police 
power over sailors and ships, their jurisdiction in certain cases over a 
whole country for the protection of trade, I refer to the full discussion 
in 2 Phill., 170, &c. 

I can plainly perceive, as was remarked in the Senate, tliat the rev- 
enue from our commerce with Turkey, Portugal, the Papal States, Den- 
mark, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, Japan, and the Central Ameri- 
can republics, is so insignificant that the expense of maintaining missions 
at their respective Courts becomes an unnecessary burden on the Treasury. 
In times like these, when the strictest economy is necessary, when we are 



156 EIGHT TEARS m CONGRESS. 

overtaxing ourselves to create enough revenue to meet our expenses, we 
had better suppress all sinecure missions than run into other sinecures, 
like these missions to Hayti and Liberia, because of the precedents 
quoted. 

I take it for gi-anted, then, that consuls can attend to all our affairs in 
those countries ; and again I ask, why do we not suppress these sinecure 
missions instead of creating- two new ones — one in Hayti, where Europe 
has none but consuls general, at the same time clothed with the title of 
charge or diplomatic agent, and another in Liberia, where Europe has 
none but consuls and vice-consuls ? 

According to the Gothas Almanac, Hayti has the following agents from 
the countries trading Avith it : England, consul general and charge d'af- 
fau'es ; France, same ; Spain, consul general ; Portugal, consul general ; 
and Holland, consul general. The United States, Belgium, Bremen, 
Denmark, Hamburg, Hanover, the Italian kingdom, Oldenburg, Meck- 
lenburg-Schwerin, Austria, Prussia, and Sweden and Norway have only 
consuls. 

Hayti returned to England one minister resident, one secretary of 
legation, and three consuls ; to France the same thing ; to Austria, Bel- 
gium, Denmark, and Hamburg, one consul each. 

Now we come back to the question, what is the need of a minister 
resident at Hayti ; and why do we want another in return ? Is commerce 
your object? You can get that by the mode proposed in my amendment. 
I ask the gentleman from Massachusetts whether he expects a minister in 
return ? Of course he does. 

Mr. GoocH. My proposition is to put Hayti upon the same footing 
with other independent nations, and to receive ministers from her, as Eng- 
land and France and other continental Powers receive them. 

Mr. Cox. The gentleman from Massachusetts intends to let Hayti 
and Liberia send as ministers whomsoever they please to this country. 
K they send negro ministers to Washington City, the gentleman will say 
they shall be welcomed as ministers, and have all the rights of Lord Lyons 
and Count Mercier. They cannot send any one else than negroes as rep- 
resentatives of their nations. Indeed, a negro, by the Constitution of 
Hayti, is the only person who can hold such an office. That Constitution 
debars whites from office. 

Mr. Fessenden. What objection can the gentleman have to such a 
representative ? 

Mr. Cox. Objection? Gracious heavens! what innocency ! Objec- 
tion to receiving a black man on an equality with the white men of this 
country? Every objection which instinct, race, prejudice, and institutions 
make. I have been taught in the histoiy of this country that these Com- 
monwealths and this Union were made for white men ; that this Govern- 
ment is a Government of Avhite men ; that the men who made it never in- 
tended, by any tiling they did, to place the black race on an equality with 
the white. The reasons for these wise precautions I have not now the 
time to discuss. They are climatic, ethnological, economical, and social. 
It may be, the gentlemen on the other side intend to carry out their 
schemes of emancipation to that extent they will raise the blacks to an 
equality in every respect with the white men of this country. I suppose 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 157 

; they want to approach that object by having a colored representative in 
the Capitol at Washington. Is not that your object? I charge that it is. 
' Do you not want to begin by givinjj national equality to the l^lack repub- 
lics ? After having obtained the equality of black nations with white na- 
tions, do you not pi'opose to carry the equality a little further, and so 
make individual, political, and social equality? 

Mr. Fessenden. The gentleman can di-aw such inferences as he 
pleases ; but he will state his own reasons, and not ours. 

Mr. Cox. If I draw my own inferences, I might draw a great many 
about the gentleman from Maine. I recollect that the gentleman stated 
that he would rather that the Union should not be restored than that sla- 
very should continue. I draw some remarkable inferences from such lan- 
guage. He is, therefore, consistent and logical in trying to get at black 
equality. If slavery is not abolished, he is a disunionist. He is for its 
abolition, and hence favors this plan of equality, to welcome the enfran- 
chised when the scheme is fully ripe. 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. The other day, when Ave had a bill before 
the House for the emancipation of the slaves of rebels, I offered an amend- 
ment for their colonization, against which the gentleman voted. 

Mr. Cox. Yes, I did. 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. That looks as if the gentleman wanted to 
keep the negroes here on an equality with us. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Cox. The gentleman laughs, and others laugh around him. It 
is only the crackling of thorns under a pot. There is no inconsistency in 
my proposition. I voted against the proposition to colonize the negroes, 
not because I did not believe, if this emancipation took place, the emanci- 
pated slaves would not be better apart from the whites, and better out of 
the country ; but because I am not prepared, in view of the great expense 
which such a proposition would incur, to add now to our present heavy 
taxation. 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. My amendment proposes that the negroes 
should be apprenticed, and that the receipts should go to pay the expenses 
of their removal. 

Mr. Cox. I know that idea was ingrafted as an amendment to some 
other wild proposition ; but it was one of those delusive, Utopian schemes 
for Federal supervision over a system of labor, which, I thought, did not 
come from the practical good sense which distinguishes the gentleman 
from Missouri, and the distinguished family from which he springs. 
[Laughter.] But Avhy does the gentleman come forward to lecture me 
for not voting for his bill ? Why does he not turn round and lecture some 
of his co7tfreres upon the other side of the House? Let him secure a ma- 
jority of his own friends first in favor of his proposition, and then he can 
appeal to us. 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. The gentleman will allow me to say that a 
majority upon this side of the House voted for it. Fifty-odd Republican 
members voted for it, which covers more than a majority of the Republi- 
cans who voted. 

Mr. Cox. Why do you not lecture those of them who did not vote 
for it? 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. I have been lecturing them all winter. 
[Laughter.] 



158 EIGHT- TEAES IN CONGKESS. 

Mr. Cox. I am afraid that my friend is too good-humored. He 
ought to use something in his lecturing beside mere easy talk. A little 
of the lash might do some of his party friends good. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. The use of the lash has almost gone out 
even with the negroes. It may still be retained upon that side of the 
House. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Cox. No, sir, it is not. The gentleman can see how perfectly 
free and easy we are over here. [Renewed laughter.] There is no sort 
of coercion or compulsion about us. Now, I want to say to my friend 
from Missouri just this about his propositions : they emanate, I know, 
from the very best of motives. He wants the negroes transported as soon 
as they are freed, but he is in a minority in his party. 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. It does not appear so. 

Mr. Cox. He is in a minority among those who control his party. 
The men who control our legislation here are those who say that the 
negro, if he is born here, has the same right to live in America as the 
white man has ; that he is entitled to freedom in locomotion and emigra- 
tion ; that you cannot force him out of the land of his birth, and that it is 
his inalienable right to be free. That is your language ; that is your 
philosophy ; and you yourself, sir. do not propose, in your own bill, any 
coercion of the blacks to make them go out of the country. Indeed, your 
bill repudiates compulsion. You cannot compel. 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. I am so thoroughly a democrat, and have 
such confidence in the people, that I believe that when you present to any 
people that which is for their best interests, they v/ill adopt it. I do not 
believe, as the gentleman and some others seem to, that these people have 
not sense enough to do what is for their interest. I believe that negroes 
understand what is good for them as well as other persons do. 

Mr. Cox. If these negroes will not go voluntarily, will you make 
them go after you free them ? 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. So far as I am concerned, I have not the 
least hesitation in saying that I would be in favor of deporting these slaves 
when emancipated. 

Mr. Cox. And that is your idea of the God-given right of liberty, is 
it? Oh! 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. Yes, sir ; I would give them the right of 
liberty where they can enjoy real liberty, and not where, as in both the 
slave and the free States, they enjoy no liberty and nothing that makes 
liberty sweet to man. I go for giving them a country and a home, and 
complete liberty in that country, where they will be superior to any other 
race. 

Mr. Cox. Well, there is a great deal of good sense in that. The 
free blacks ought to be transported fi-om this country ; as Jefferson said, 
when free, they are better away from the whites. 

Mr. Blair, of Missouri. I am sorry the gentleman did not vote with 
me, and show the same sort of good sense and consistency. 

Mr. Cox. I am perfectly consistent, sir, but I never will vote for 
schemes like that of the gentleman, which proposes to create more free 
negroes, when we cannot as yet send off the free negroes we have ; and 
because 1 believe that, in spite of every thing that he can do, it Mill entail 



FOREIGN APFALRS. 159 

an expense that no people can meet, and that our people now cannot meet. 
I am with the gentleman in desiring to send the freed black men out of 
the country, or at least in preventing any more from coming into my own 
State. The State of Indiana excludes them, and I believe has, like the 
State of Illinois, a colonization fund to pay their way out of the country. 
I wish the State of Ohio had the same tiling, and then, instead of the cen- 
sus showing in Ohio an increase in the ratio of the free colored population 
of our State over the whites, it woidd show a decrease in proportion to 
the white race, as is the case in Indiana and Illinois. 

Mr. Julian. In the State of Indiana the black law is notoriously a 
dead letter upon our statute-book. 

Mr. HoLMAN. The constitutional provision, and the law made in 
pursuance of it prohibiting the immigration of free negroes into Indiana, 
may be inoperative in that part of the State which my colleague repre- 
sents, but I am very sure that in that portion of the State which borders 
upon Kentucky the people have deemed it necessary, as a measure of 
policy, and to protect their own internal interests, to enforce the law. 

Mr. Cox. I think I must go on with my remarks. I have been led 
away altogether from the course which 1 had marked out for myself in 
regard to this bill. I intended to show the state of society in Hayti ; 
something of its commerce ; something of the condition of its Govern- 
ment, that we might see whether there is any propriety in our having a 
diplomatic functionary at that place, and having one from them in return. 
I shall, however, take an early opportunity of showing to this House ex- 
actly what I conceive to be the etiect of these schemes of emancipation 
and colonization, especially in reference to the free negroes and their im- 
migration into my own State. I made an issue the other day with my 
colleague [Mr. Binghabi] on this subject, and I intend to pursue that 
issue, and to see whether or not the State of Ohio has the right, and should 
exercise it, to keep out these hordes of blacks that are now coming over 
into Ohio. I know we cannot send them to Ha}i;i. They will not go 
there. The idea of the gentleman from Missouri is utterly chimerical. 
They claim the same right in this country that he has. In the meetings 
at which they have assembled in this city, the proposition to go to Hayti 
was made to them, and they voted it down. It was so in Boston — 

Mr. BiXGHAM. Will my colleague have the kindness to let me sug- 
gest here, as he proposes to make an issue with me in our State — 

Mr. Cox. I joined issue with the gentleman the other day. 

Mr. Bingham. I did not know that we had joined issue so very 
formally, but will he have the kindness to let me know how he proposes 
to dispose of these free negroes ? He says he will not favor their compul- 
sory emigration to Liberia : where will he put them ? 

Mr. Cox. I said not a word about compulsory emigration to Liberia. 
I would put them where the Constitution puts them. But one thing I will 
not do — favor the equality of blacks with whites, cither individually or 
nationally. 

A few words before I conclude as to the Government of Hayti. The 
present state of Haytien society is divided into two political parties very 
distinct from each other — that of the blacks or pure negroes, and that of 
the mulattoes or mixed race. The former have the power, but are vei7 



160 EIGHT TEAJBS IN CONGRESS. 

ignorant ; the latter embrace all the educated classes, but are envied and 
suspected by the pure blacks, and therefore kept by them under a species 
of yoke similar to that of the " rayas " in Turkey. As an illustration of 
the extreme ignorance of the blacks, I will quote the words of President 
Pierrot, in 1845, who pretended that all Haytiens who, like himself, 
could not read, were to be considered blacks, and all those that read were 
to be deemed mixed. The Haytien black achieved his independence ; but 
as he has always present to his mind the fact that he was a slave to the 
white, and has suiFered under him, he naturally hates him, and all that 
have any connection with him. Hence the envy and suspicion he enter- 
tains against the mulattoes, whom he supposes to be the friends of the 
white, and to be plotting with him to bring the black back to slavery. He 
has a decided reluctance to every kind of improvement proposed by the 
white or mulatto, and he will not educate himself. The pure blacks are 
in the proportion of nine to one, and rule all. The administration of the 
Government is ignorant, improvident, engaged in nothing but uniforms 
and parade, inexplicable dumb shows, and " negro shows" at that. They 
have an army of forty thousand strong, in rags, and scarcely one-third 
armed, without any kind of discipline, almost without officers, and whose 
pay, small as it is, is neglected. They are the ebony counterpart of Fal- 
staff's company when he used the king's press so damnably. They have 
a treasury, kept up by paper money, the nominal value of which, issued 
for one dollar, or gourde, has fallen to twelve cents ! They have an ex- 
cessive tariff on both imports and exports, from which the State derives 
its revenue. There is great corruption in all the departments of their 
Government. 

Several Members. They are on an equality with this Government 
in that. 

Mr. Cox. That remark might well apply to one Department ; and 
if Hayti instead of Russia had been selected by a former Cabinet officer 
for his dishonorable retiracy, there would, I admit, be a sort of fitness of 
things. [Laughter.] 

Thus I have recounted in a desultory way — for I did not expect Hayti 
in to-day — the condition of one of the finest countries in the world, which, 
had it been well administered, would really deserve its old name, " the 
Queen of the Antilles." This state of things is due to the fact that, for 
the last seventy years of their independence, the blacks have been con- 
fined to themselves, and have declined all improvement or instruction, either 
in law or economy. During this trial of seventy years the blacks have 
proved that they are not fit for government, nor competent for independ- 
ence. The conduct of Spain, referred to by the gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts [Mr. Gooch], proves this. To admit such a nation on an equal- 
ity with this Republic, is as much of a caricature on international comity as 
the admission of a Port Royal contraband to a seat in Congress. It is an 
indisputable fact that Hayti, with a population of over half a million, and 
one of the finest soils on the earth, productive of the rarest articles, pos- 
sessed of rich mines of gold, mercury, iron, and coal — an Eldorado — has 
for the past seventy years remained an unprofitable spot because of the 
inability of its people to raise themselves above the corruption, laziness, 



FOREIGN ATFAIES. 161 

improvidence, ignorance, and vice wMcli seem to follow the undirected 
African wherever he goes. 

It is said that England and France receive charges from Hayti and 
Liberia. The Exeter Hall abolitionists have perhaps made it possible in 
London to have the negro recognized at Court ; but I understand that ex- 
cept on Court days, when he is presented in that solemn scene of mockery, 
he is isolated and slighted, except it may be in the saloons of the Duchess 
of Sutherland or some other innamorata of the African. In Paris we 
know that any show from a puppet to a prince is a sensation ; and besides, 
there was some reason why France should take Hayti under her pro- 
tective wing. But unless gentlemen here propose equality, unless they 
intend abolition entire, there is nothing logical in their pressing this bill. 
So long as they suffer slaveholders and slave States to have or take any 
part in this Union, it is an insult to bring into the Federal metropolis this 
black minister proposed by the gentlemen. What is it for, unless it be to 
outrage the prejudices of the whites of this country, and to show how 
audaciously the abolitionists can behave ? How fine it will look, after 
emancipating the slaves in this District, to welcome Jicre at the White 
House an African, full-blooded, all gilded and belaced, dressed in court 
style, with wig and sword and tights and shoe-buckles and ribbons and 
spangles and many other adornments which African vanity will suggest ! 
How suggestive of fun to our good-humored, joke-cracking Executive ! 
With what admiring awe will the contrabands apj^roach this ebony demi- 
god ! while all decent and sensible white people will laugh the silly and 
ridiculous ceremony to scorn. 



TRENT AFFAIR. 

SEIZUKE OF SOUTHERN AMBASSADORS RIGHT OF SE^UICH IN TIIIE OP WAR ENGLISH AND 

AMERICAN DOCTRINE. 

On the 17th of December, 1861, I took occasion, in reporting a bill 
for the relief of the owners of the British ship " Perthshire," to discuss 
the matters involved in the Trent affair. A few extracts from the debate 
will furnish the preface to the more elaborate discussion of the rights of 
neutrals, which follows : 

I would not to-day bring in this bill, if I believed that any inference 
would be drawn from its passage that it was dictated by any concession 
to British arrogance. I would not ask this House even to do a matter of 
right under a threat from Great Britain, or under the dictation of her 
arrogance or passion ; but in order that we may demand our rights of 
Great Britain, we should always be ready to do right toward her. In the 
jealous defence of our maritime rights our oflicers may exceed their duty. 
The moment that is ascertained, as it is in this instance, the Government 
will take pride in according satisfaction. Our Government must do its 
duty in order to assert its rights. It is to be hoped that the action of this 
House, at least toward foreign powers, will show a wise and just con- 
11 



1 



162 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

ciliatiou without any timid or time-serving submission. While we would 
not yield one inch to any servile fear or ungenerous compulsion, such as 
is threatened by the late news from England, it is becoming the dignity 
of the Republic promptly to remedy grievances. Thus we are triply 
armed to demand prerogatives belonging to our nationality, both at home 
and abroad. 

Great Britain should, and I trust will, meet us in this spirit, when we 
demand of her why it is that she has aiforded an asylum in Southampton 
harbor to the Nashville. Without nationality, Vi^ithout even the pretence 
of a barbarous privateering commission ; and after bearing an envoy of 
the rebels (Colonel Peyton) to Great Britain ; after overhauling the Har- 
vey Birch upon the high seas, almost within sight of the shores of Eng- 
land ; after dragging down the stars and stripes from that ship, and 
raising instead that strange banner of triple-striped infamy ; after ironing 
her crew, and with the red hand of the bold buccaneer burning her to the 
water's edge ; after all this, the Nashville has found a hospitable asylum 
in tlie harbor of Southampton, to be refitted for another outrage with war- 
like armaments from English storehouses ! We have a right to demand 
how it is that she is permitted thus to refit. We have a right to demand 
whether that is in accordance with her much-boasted but ill-disguised 
neutrality. We have a right to know, after Great Britain has assumed 
her position of neutrality, and assumed it voluntarily and in defiance of 
our protest, how it is that, consistently with that assumption, she can 
give aid and comfort and warlike stores to this ship Nashville, for the 
very purpose of enabling her again to make roving inroads upon our com- 
merce ? I think, so far as I know anything of the case of the Nashville, 
that the English people, if not the English Government, have acted as 
accessories after the fact to the piracy committed upon our commerce. 
She cannot complain, then, that in the midst of the great national peril 
that overshadows us, and while the public nerve is so acutely sensitive to 
the very least indignity — she cannot complain that we, in our great trib- 
ulation, should ask of her to do right as a neutral, since she has assumed 
that position. In connection with the case that I have presented to the 
House, I will now, for a very few moments only, pall tlie attention of the 
House to the position which our Government assumes v^^itli reference to 
the case of the Ti'ent. I say our Government assumes a position. True, 
the President has in his message preserved a discreet reticence with refer- 
ence to it ; but this House in the first hours of its session, and the Secre- 
tary of the Navy in his report, have justified Captain Wilkes for his 
performance. Honoi-s have been showered on him. Plis heroism has 
been lauded. I assume that our Government, by not disapproving, at 
least has sanctioned his conduct on the highest principles of international 
justice. 

The otlier day, at the beginning of this session, the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Lovejoy] introduced his resolution approving the conduct 
of Captain Wilkes. I voted for that resolution. I approve oflHhat action 
of Commodore Wilkes, because it was founded on international right. 
This matter came again before the House yesterday ; and lo ! in the lace 
of the morning news Avhich echoed with the roar of the English lion, thei'e 
seemed to be a different spirit on the other side of the House ! I hope 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 163 

that the House did not intend on yesterday to express an opinion adverse 
to our rights in the case of the Trent, by referring the matter to the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs. I believe that, when the matter is discussed 
by that committee and reported to the House, the committee and the 
House will stand together by our rights in the premises. But I was 
reluctant to vote for its reference ; not because the members of that com- 
mittee will not examine it fully and do their duty to the country, but 
because my own opinion was foregone and had been expressed en the 
resolution of the gentleman from Illinois. The more I examine it, the 
more I am satisfied that, in regard to this question, this Government 
stands in a position to defend herself in any forum before the world. 

I\Ir. Colfax. I desire to say to my friend from Ohio, that in common 
with many other members, I voted yesterday for the reference of the 
resolution to the Committee on Foreign Affairs because I thought that, 
standing as we may probably be on the brink of war, it was the duty of 
the American Congress to send out whatever it declared gravely, delib- 
erately, solemnly, as the emanation of a standing committee, and not as 
the mere impulse of a solitary member. 

Mr. Vallandigham. Will the gentleman from Indiana be kind 
enough to explain why those considerations which he urges with such force 
just now, did not occur to him on the first day of the session, when he 
proposed tp imprison one of those men? 

Mr. Colfax. I wiU do so with great pleasure. 

Mr. Vallandighaji. He had not heard from England at the time, 
peradveuturc. 

Mr. Colfax. My resolution in reference to Mr. Mason was in refer- 
ence to a man who had taken an oath as a Senator of the United States 
to support the Constitution of the country, and had violated it. He was 
not only a traitor, but he had violated his oath. He was in our hands, 
and I proposed to imprison him and subject him to treatment correspond- 
ing with that shown to Colonel Corcoran. When we come to deal as a 
nation with foreign nations, that is, of course, a different matter. 

Mr. Vallandigham. I ask the gentleman from Indiana whether 
there is to-day any less violation of their oaths on the part of Mason and 
Slidell than there was the first day of the session ? Are they less traitors 
now than they were then? If so, what makes the difference? 

Mr. Cox. I must arrest this interlocutory debate. 

Mr. Colfax. I am still in favor of meting out the same treatment 
to them as Colonel Corcoran receives. 

Mr. Vallaxdigiiam. These men will be surrendered before three 
months in the face of a threat. I make that prediction here to-day. 

Mr. Colfax. I disbelieve it. 

Mr. Cox. I hope that the prediction of my colleague will never be 
fulfilled. I have some faith in the sagacity of our Seci'etary of State, too 
much faith in the honor of the people of the country, to believe that they 
will ever permit their Government, in a case of clear right, to so dishonor 
them. The honor of a nation is its credit ; its credit is its commerce ; its 
commerce is its cash ; and its cash brings with it the comforts and refine- 
ments of civilization. Where you touch the cash, you have a powerful 
argument v/ith any nation. The pecuniary argument is, Avith the majority, 



164 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGRESS. 

generally stronger than the moral argument. "When moral influences 
combine with pecuniary, they are irresistible. The people of the country, 
however, will stand, as a point of honor, by the rights to which they are 
entitled on land or sea. They will look with jealousy on anything that 
has a tendency toward impairing their nationality, either at home or 
abroad. When they fail in this, they deserre expatriation from this the 
cushioned part of God's footstool given in high trust to their keeping. 

I was about to state the proposition on which I believe the Govern- 
ment can plant itself in this matter. I do not propose now to argue it 
elaborately. I will cite but few authorities. The public newspapers have 
been teeming with authorities, some relevant and some irrelevant. 

Mr. LovEJOT. I rise to a question of order. My point is, that the 
remarks of the gentleman are irrelevant to the question before the House, 
which is a question as to the detention of the Perthshire. 

Mr. Cox, If I could only put the " African " into the question, no 
doubt it would be relevant. I propose to show a direct connection between 
our according the rights that are due to Great Britain and our demanding 
our own rights in return. Therefore my argument is logical and per- 
tinent. 

The Speaker. The Chair decides that the gentleman from Ohio is 
in order. 

Mr. Cox. I will show the gentleman immediately that I am in order. 
I am going to make the connection [laughter], and will do it without 
the aid of the negro. The principle on Avhich we will accord justice to 
England, and on which we shall demand justice from England, is to 
demand oxyc rights and do our duty in return. Our justification in the 
case of the Trent is, that her act was one of hostility in bearing these 
ambassadors ; and hostility, whether it consist in carrying despatches, 
envoys, or other and worse than contraband, in a neutral merchant ship. 

It will not do to answer that no case like this has ever been adjudged. 
Nearly all the Spanish- American ambassadors, dm-ing the revolutions of 
their States, that have been sent between this continent and Europe, have 
been sent either in British or American ships, and have never been inter- 
fered with. European ambassadors passing from nation to nation have, 
by reason of the geographical relations of the countries, never been dis- 
turbed ; and hence specific cases of this nature have not arisen hitherto. 

The principle which regulates these international questions is this : it 
has been decided that a neutral ship bearing despatches in time of war 
shall be confiscate, and if confiscate when bearing despatches, a fortiori, 
if such vessel bears ambassadors, who are of far greater consequence 
than despatches. The mission of ambassadors is of far more importance 
than battalions of armed men and whole cargoes of shot, shell, guns, 
sabres, and other contraband. An ambassador may carry in himself 
alliances which will give credit, raise loans and armies, and even solve 
revolutions. The ambassadors of this Government, in our Revolution, 
consummated alliances and made treaties and loans, which enabled us to 
secure recognition and independence. Then there is in this case a stronger 
reason why the vessel should be confiscated when she bears that which is 
much more important to the enemy than despatches. Our ambassador 
in the Revolution, Mr. Laurens, was considered of so much importance 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 165 

by the British Government that they exchanged him for Lord ComwaUis, 
the commander-in-chief. And so in this case, these ambassadors, recog- 
nized as sucli by the President of their so-called Confederate States in 
his message, are of fifty-fold more importance than merely articles con- 
traband of war. 

Now, the right, in time of war, of every belligerent ship to search all 
vessels, except national vessels, for contraband, has never been denied. 
The Queen's proclamation proceeded upon this principle. Hautefeuille 
propounds this doctrine. Chief Justice Marshall recognized it in the 
Santisima Trinidad case (7 Wheaton, 283). 

" Two publicists, Wheaton and Ortolan, adopting the opinion of the English judges, 
look upon the transport of despatches by a neutral as an act quite as grave as the trans- 
port of troops, and as leading to the confiscation of the neutral vessel." 

Such is the language of Hautefeuille. Hostile despatches are in the 
same category with contraband. (Chitty's Law of Nations, p. 147 ; 
Phillimore, 3G8, 370 ; 1 Kent, 154 ; Wheaton, 529.) 

In the case of the Orozembo, which carried three soldiers and two 
civilians in the Dutch service from Macao to Batavia, Sir William Scott 
held: 

"This is the case of an admitted American vessel ; but the title to restitution is im- 
pugned on the ground of its having been employed, at the time of the capture, in the 
ser\ice of the enemy, in transporting military persons, first to Macao, and ultimately to 
Batavia. That a vessel hired by the enemy for the conveyance of military persons is to 
be considered as a transport subject to condemnation has been in a recent case held by 
this court, and on other occasions. What is the number of military persons that shall 
constitute such a case it may be diflicult to define. Whether the principle would apply 
to them alone, I do not feel it necessary to determine. I am not aware of any case in 
which that question has been agitated ; but it appears to me, on principle, to be but rea- 
sonable that whenever it is of sufficient importance to that enemy that such persons 
should be sent out on the public service at the public expense, it should afford equal 
ground of forfeiture against the vessel that may be let out for a purpose so intimately 
connected with the hostile operations." 

The same principle is held in Hazlett and Roadie's Manual of Mari- 
time Warfare, page 293. It is strongly stated, in its reason and princi- 
ple, by Lord Stowell in the case of the Maria (1 Eobinson, 340), as fol- 
lows : 

" The right of visiting and searching merchant ships upon the high seas, whatever be 
the ships, whatever be the cargoes, whatever be the destinations, is an incontestable right 
of the lawfully commissioned cruisers of a belligerent nation." * * * " ^pjjjg 
right is so clear in principle that no man can deny it who admits the legality of marine 
capture." * ■* « " Xhe right is equally clear in practice, for practice is uni- 
form and universal upon this subject. The many European treaties which refer to this right, 
refer to it as preexisting, and merely regulate the exercise of it. All writers upon the 
law of nations unanimously acknowledge it. In short, no man in the least degree con- 
versant with subjects of this kind has ever, that I know of, breathed a doubt upon it." 

In the case of the Atalanta, decided in 1808 (6 Robinson, 440), the 
learned judge said : 

" Nor let it be supposed that it is an act of light or casual importance. The conse- 
quence of such a service is indefinite — infinitely beyond the effect of any contraband that 
can be conveyed. The carrying even of two cargoes of stores is necessaiily an assistance 
of a limited nature ; but in the transmission of despatches may be conveyed the entire 
plan of a can^aign that may defeat all the projects of the other belligerent in that quar- 
ter of the world." 



166 EIGHT YEARS m CONGRESS. 



i 



In a subsequent case, -when the despatches were in course of convey- 
ance, not from the colonies of the enemy, but from a State in comity, and 
from the public ambassador of the enemy, residing in that State, to hia 
own Government, Sir William Scott restoi'ed the vessel's cargo on pay- 
ment of the captor's expenses ; thus holding the search and capture justi- ' 
fiable. In distinguishing this case from the preceding, he said : 

" I have before said that persons discharging the functions of ambassadors are, in a 
peculiar manner, objects of the protection and favor of the law of nations. The limits 
that are assigned to the operations of war against them, by Vattel, and other writers upon 
these subjects, are, that you may exercise your right of war against them wherever the 
character of hostility exists ; i/ou may stop the ambassador of your enemy on his pas- 
sage,'" kc—The Caroline, 6 Rob., 461-468. 

Mr. Gushing, in his perspicuous and able discussion of this subject, 
maintains the principle by which this question can be determined. From 
his abundant learning in international law and his cogent logic, he de- 
duces the doctrine which I venture to say no English jurist will dispute. 
He says : 

" The belligerent seizures of enemy despatches and military pei'sons, although not pre- 
cisely in point as cases, are yet the common corollaries of the same principle as the arrest 
of enemy ambassadors. To argue the contrary would be to make the law of nations a 
mere collection of detached facts, instead of a system of doctrines and piinclples. That 
is not so. New or doubtful cases may occur, innovations may be accomplished or at- 
tempted, in the law of nations, as in any branch of municipal law ; but principle remains, 
doctrines subsist, general rules are to be reasoned out for the guidance of nations and of 
men, as well in the juridical relations of nations as of men. And the doctrine here is 
that of contraband of war ; the principle, that of the duty of all neutral Governments to 
abstain from affording military aid to either recognized belligerent; and, in like manner, to 
abstain from affording political aid to the insurgents of another Government, save when 
the time may have come, if it ever shall come, to treat such insurgents as a new, inde- 
pendent State, and to do that even at the risk and responsibility of war with the legiti- 
mate Government." 

I might add to this the authority of Mr. Everett ; and to his, the 
opinion Avhich I received to-day in a letter from a statesman now in re- 
tirement [Mr. Buchanan], who has served his country as a diplomatist 
at two of the leading courts of Europe, besides filling our office of Sec- 
retary of State with consummate ability. The case of the Trent in their 
judgment is embraced within the reason of the rule laid down for des- 
patches and contraband. 

The more this question is examined, the more impregnable is our po- 
sition. Nor is there any thing in our previous diplomacy to weaken it. 
I had supposed, before examining the question, that we Avere precluded 
by our previous conduct from asserting this principle. But the question 
upon Avhich this Government once went to war with Great Britain was in 
resistance of her claim to take from our ships British subjects — not am- 
bassadors. Nor does our denial of the right of search, which was in- 
volved in the slave trade, preclude us from asserting the position I main- 
tain. That doctrine had reference exclusively to a time of peace. There 
is nothing, then, in our diplomatic record to weaken our position. 

It is enough now for us that on this ground we may safely say to 
England : " Fulfil your neutral obligations. Until you do so, you cannot 
quarrel with us for the exercise of our most indubitable right. If you 
insist on belligerent rights between North and South, do not, as a neutral, 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 167 

help the one belligerent, to the detriment of the other ; for, as Vattel and 
all publicists hold, this is fraud." 

In this spirit alone can our relations toward Great Britain continue ami- 
table. We will readily yield her rightful demands, as in this case of the 
Perthshire. "We y^ld nothing — nothixg, to her arrogance, passion, or 
pride, when Ave are clearly in the right. The letter of General Jackson 
to Livingston, the original of which was read by the historian Bancroft 
at a Xew York meeting, and applied by him to disunionists here, may be 
as appropriately applied to their sympathizers abroad : " The Union must 
be preserved without blood, if this be possible ; but it must be preserved 
at all hazard, and at any price." This Jacksonian talk has ever been 
my rule of action here : " The Union, ivithout bloodshed., if possible ; but 
THE Union at all hazard and at ant price." So with our honor 
among the nations. For it is thus, and thus only, that in the conflict for 
our national existence, we will avoid entanglement and conflict with na- 
tions whose material interests, as they think, depend upon our discomfit- 
ure, and whose chronic jealousy of our republican success has led their 
rulers to hail our anticipated disruption and ruin with delight. 

We are, sir, in this country too sensitive of foreign opinion. Mr. 
Seward said well when he told Mr. Dayton that it was no business of our 
ambassadors to overhear what the foreign press or foreign ministers said 
about us. Our duty was to maintain our Union in its integrity, and our 
position as a leading Power among mankind, regardless of the machina- 
tions of rebels at honae, and the derision and hostility of kings and aristo- 
crats abroad. I know that we naturally dislike to have our institutions 
misrepresented, and our destruction predicted. There is much in the old 
Spanish motto, " De mi rey, solo yo " — no one shall speak of our king 
except ourselves ; no one shall speak of our sovereignty but ourselves. 
I would that we were more indifferent to the poisoned shafts of foreiga 
malice, barbed as they are by aristocratic hate and pretension. We have 
been freely scorned by nations whose moral standard is measured by their 
commercial profit and loss, whose national honor depends upon a cotton 
pod, whose philanthropy has been an intermeddling Phariseeism, and whose 
complacent neutrality, so promptly assumed, seems to glory in the humil- 
iation of a kindred and Christian nation, without regret or sympathy, be- 
cause of its splendid illustration of commercial grandeur, and its defiant 
adherence to democratic government. 

Let us, sir, pursue our duty to the age and the nation with unrufiled 
composure and determined will. Heaven does not desert the undismayed. 
Even though there may be foreign troubles impending, for us to despair 
now is to die. I like the motto of the old Romans, which I have, in this 
hour of our trial, often commended to my constituents, " never to despair 
of the Republic ! " They used to write it upon the lintel of their doors, 
and to emblazon it upon their temples. It was upon the lips of the peo- 
ple, it was in the mouths of their orators, " never to despair of the Repub- 
lic ; " and when a Roman general, even in the agony of his defeat, gave 
out the inspiring words, " never to despair of the Republic," a Roman 
Senate voted him a triumphal entry within her imperial gates. 

Let us fling aside the burden of our national woe, lament nothing of 
the irrevocable past, dare all that is just and constitutional ; make no cruel 



168 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

and disastrous diversions from the great object of rescuing our national- 
ity ; crush as we avouM a nest of adders those who would impair its pro- 
portions as well as those who would turn us from that object to other and 
ignoble objects, involving fresh divisions, broken armies, social revolu- 
tions, servile insurrections, perpetual penalties, and' eternal hates ; and 
move, each and all, heart, soul, body, men, means, munitions, intelli- 
gence, and patriotism, to the grand and only object — the restoration of 
our dismantled Union. Thus feeling and thus acting, we may emerge ' 
from this strife of struggling States ; and, like the fabled demigod, re-i 
ceive added strength from our very prostration. If, sir, we observe the 
rules of right and honor in regulating oiu' conduct abroad, if we observe 
the object of the war that is now upon us, as the President proclaimed it 
to the people, as the soldiers of the Republic understand it, as the House 
resolved it in the Crittenden resolutions, and as the Constitution and the 
Union demand, we may be assured that our martial resources, the intelli- 
gence and valor of the masses, the very physical geography of the coun- 
try, and God himself, will fight for us against this rebellion. I believe 
that Providence has marked upon the face of this continent — written in 
lines never to be erased; — ^that this Union, as it was, shall remain, one and 
indivisible. I believe in the idea suggested by Mr. Everett, that our 
physical geography binds us and bars us together. He said that before 
this Union could be permanently broken, the Alleghanies must bow their 
heads to the ocean, and the Mississippi and the Missouri roll back their 
currents to the Rocky Mountains. If we would assure to posterity the po- 
litical Union we have lived under so happily, we should forget all thoughts 
of vengeance, seize, with statesmanlike sagacity, upon the elements of 
unity we have even yet in our unhappy land, and mould them in the spirit 
of conciliation and Avisdom ; keeping out of these halls fatal and disas- 
trous discussions on inflammatory and sectional topics ; keeping the one 
holy object before us for wliich the lives of our brave soldiers are so freely 
offered, and the millions of our means are so freely expended. With this 
object nobly pursued, God will be with us, and our arms will prevail ! 

We have many elements of imion. We have as yet a common blood, 
a common language, a common heritage, a common ancestry, a common 
history, a common glory, and a common faith in the same heavenly 
Father. Thanks to their courageous patriotism, Ave have many of the 
noblest men from the South still Avith lis, taking their part in our legisla- 
tion, and sharing the perils of the Republic. They sit around me, with 
eye unblenchcd and spirit unbi'oken. I am ready to heed now, as I have 
always heeded, their counsel, Avhen they tell us how rightly to mould these 
elements of union for its restoration. Mr. Speaker, if we Avould thus 
act all may yet be well. We may come from this great struggle strength- 
ened and purified by sacrifice, more young, more exultant, more progres- 
sive, and inspired AA'ith a purer if not so ostentatious a consciousness of 
our great destiny, under Providence. I move you, sir, therefore, that 
this bUl I have discussed preliminarily may be put on its passage. 



FOKEIGN ATFAERS. 169 



DEMOCRACY OF THE SEA. 

PARIS CONFERENCES SECRETARY MARCY's REPLY RIGHTS OP NEUTRALS THE LIBEBAL 

AMERICAN MARITIME POLICY, CONTPvASTED WITH THAT OP ENGLAND. 

Ox the 3cl of March, 1862, Mr. Cox introduced the following joint 
resolution in relation to maritime rights : 

Whereas international law cannot acquire any considerable extension except by the 
collective work of the nations either assembled in congress by delegates, or by the com- 
bined negotiation of the principal nations : and whereas the events connected with the 
Trent affair have given rise to the discussion of maritime rights by the principal powers 
of the world, all interested in their authoritative settlement ; and in that discussion the 
friendly offices of the Emperor of France were tendered to this Government for the pur- 
pose of adjusting the questions involved on a clear and liberal basis, looking to the 
amelioration of the rights of neutrals upon the sea : Therefore — 

Be it resolved, d'c. First. — That the national legislature acknowledges the friendly in- 
tentions and enlightened views of the Emperor of the French in said interposition. 

Second. — That it favors the most liberal propositions with respect to maritime rights 
and the abolition of such usages as restrict the liberty of neutrals and multiply the causes 
of dissension in the world, believing that humanity and justice demand that the calamities 
incident to war should be strictly limited to the belligerents themselves and to those who 
voluntarily take part with them ; but that neutrals abstaining in good faith from such 
complicity ought to be left to pursue their ordinary trade with either belligerent. 

Third. — That the present time is propitious for the resumption of negotiations to se- 
cure these objects, and especially for the concurrence of the nations in the benignant ar- 
ticles of the declaration of the Congress of Paris of the sixteenth of April, eighteen hun- 
dred and fifty-six, with the amendment proposed by Mr. Marcy, viz : — 1. Privateering is 
and remains abohshed, provided that the private property of the subjects or citizens of a 
belligerent on the high seas shall be exempted from seizure by public armed vessels of the 
other belligerent, except it be contraband. 2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, 
with the exception of contraband of war. 3. Neutral goods, with the exception of con- 
traband of war, are not liable to capture under the enemy's flag. 4. Blockades, in order 
to be binding, must be effective. 

Fourth. — That the people of the United States entertain the hope that the great mari- 
time powers of France and England, reUuquishing their present objections growing out 
of their ill-advised recognition of our insurgent States as belligerents, will consent to the 
propositions of the Paris conference, as the United States have so constantly invited, and 
as Mr. Marcy proposed to the Government of France on the twenty-eighth day of July, 
eighteen hundred and fifty-sis ; with such a liberal expansion of them that the private 
property, not contraband, of citizens and subjects of nations in collision should be ex- 
empted from confiscation equally in warfare waged on the laud and in warfare waged upon 
the seas, which are the common highways of the nations. 

Fifth. — That the efforts of the late Secretary Marcy and the present Secretary of State 
to have these maxims ingrafted as fixed principles of international law were eminently 
wise and just, sanctioned by our traditionary policy, and conducive to the welfare of the 
Republic, aud to the highest interests of peace and civilization. 

Sixth. — That, for the accomplishment of this result, it would be both courteous and 
wise for our Government to consider the proposal of the eminent publicist of France, M. 
Hautefeuille, for a congress of the maritime powers, which, by uniting in one body the 
scattered forces of all neutrals, may secure to each the respect and security wliich they 
cannot obtain while remaining isolated ; and that thus they may be enabled to maintain, 
as a lasting element of the law of nations, that maritime equilibrium so long sought by 
the United States of America, and so important to the freedom of commerce and the re- 
pose of the world. 

On the 11th of April, 18G2, I advocated these resolutions. Had our 



lYO EIGHT TEAKS IIT CONGKESS. 

Government in its intestine conflict followed these doctrines upon the land, 
it would, to-daj stand upon a firmer ground of vantage than it now enjoys. 
It would commend this nation with emphasis to the attention of mankind, 
as the advocate of liberal laws, applicable to another and less stable ele- 
ment. 

Mr. Cox said : These resolutions reassert the American doctrine in 
favor of neutral rights, and for the protection of private property on the 
sea. It has been the privilege of this Government, ever since its existence, 
to champion the equality of rights upon the sea. Against force and tra- 
dition, kingcraft and aristocracy, we have asserted by our institutions de- 
mocracy upon the earth. Against force, tradition, and pretension, we 
have asserted democracy upon the sea. Not more dear to the American 
honor is the equality of right among our citizens under the Constitution 
than is the equality of right of our ships and property under our flag upon 
the ocean. There is no time unseasonable for its assertion. In the midst 
of our Revolution it was a theme of interest to our statesmen, and in the 
present troubles of our country it deserves a prominent place in our 
thoughts. In a debate in the English House of Commons, on the 17th of 
March, Mr. Disraeli said that the question of maritime rights was the 
most important question that could engage the attention of an English 
legislature, as it aflfected seriously the naval strength of that country. 
But for the overwhelming necessity created by the I'ebellion here, the 
same might be asserted with even more force with regard to our own 
Government, l^ot only is this true, because we are a commercial people 
— not only because our commerce and our sea-coast surpass those of any 
other nation — ^but because the relative strength of our commerce and our 
navy is such that all our intei'ests lie in following the neutral line of pol- 
icy, and in the protection of private property from devastation by the large 
navies of the Old World. 

The organs of aristocratic pretension in England, like the " Times," speak- 
ing as well for the Government as for the Tory party led by Lord Derby, 
oppose any further concession to neutrals upon the sea. These organs, 
while exulting over what they are pleased to term the disgraceful failure 
of democracy in America, evidenced by our rebellion, condemn with Eng- 
lish stubbornness, and in their isolated pride, the humane principles of 
their own liberalists like Bright, Cobden, Horsefall, and Baring. They 
affect to regard the anxiety of their commercial class for a better code of 
maritime law as the suicide of British naval supremacy. They look with 
jealousy and hate upon the efforts of French statesman like Chevalier, 
Hautefeuillc, Thouvenel, and, I may add. Napoleon, for the freedom of 
the seas. Indeed, the English Government, judging by the recent debates, 
are ready to retrograde from their present position taken at the instance 
of France, at the Paris Conference, in favor of neutral rights. One thing 
was developed in those debates. England must either creep back to her 
old selfish policy, or advance to our liberal doctrine. To remain as she 
is, will, in case of war, give her commerce to neutrals and her cruisers to 
idleness. "With the efibrts of France, seconded as they are by all other 
Powers except England, and perhaps Spain, the United States are in 



FOKEIGN AFFAIES. 171 

closest sympathy. My resolutions express that sympathy. They are the 
answer of our people to the tenders of France. 

I would especially commend these resolutions to the study of members 
who represent commercial cities, both upon the Atlantic and Pacific. 
They are not without vital interest to the agricultural and mechanical 
interests, however remote from the coast. My own district has no direct 
commerce. But, 

" Though inland far we be," 

our interest, which is agriculture, is imbound with commerce by golden 
bands. Commerce does not suffer without all interests suffering. The 
ship that plouglis its furrows upon the sea is bringing the harvest reward 
to the husbandman who ploughs the soil in the far-off valleys of the 
West. 

The importance of commerce in civilization cannot be overrated. The 
interdependence of States is the highest evidence of thcii* true independ- 
ence. The most flourishing States have attained their highest elevation 
when closely connected with every part of the civilized world by success- 
ful commerce. When they lost their enterprise on the sea, they sank in 
the scale of nations. Heaven has ordered tlirough the sea a mutual de- 
pendence. Soil, climate, and the variety of the earth's productions knit 
nations in mutual enterprise, while they bind society together in mutual 
dependence. All the illuminations of knowledge, the generosities of heart, 
and the multiplied means of human happiness, are the results of com- 
merce. The more free commerce is, the more light, humanity, and happi- 
ness the world enjoys. The less restricted that interdependence, the 
more opulent are the blessings of the civilization it bestows. Let the 
fetters which war imposes on commerce melt away, and with the reforms 
already made in the maritime law, we can truly say that in no season or 
"contingency shall civilization retrograde, and the " seas w^ill but join the 
regions they divide." The liberation of commei'ce from its trammels has 
been the work of many ages. Especially has the task of liberating neu- 
tral commerce during war, and of defining articles contraband, been the 
object of many commercial treaties. The navigation laws, defining what 
are national ships, the mode of registry, their peculiar privileges, and the 
conditions under which foreign ships shall be allowed to engage in the 
trade of the country, either as importers or exporters, or as carriers from 
one part of the country to another, though greatly ameliorated, are still 
the subject of liberal legislation for further reform. That nation w^hich 
wiU guard its commerce and meliorate its restrictions Avill surely reap the 
benefits, in the credit, importance, and independence of its citizens and its 
nationality. It is with this high purpose that the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs will present before Congress these resolutions. 

It is perfectly consistent for a fair mind to sustain these resolutions 
and still retain the belief that the persons seized on board the Trent w^ere 
contraband, at least in the English sense of that term ; and however we 
may differ as to the propriety of restoring the persons seized, there can 
be no difference in asking for a better code in reference to contraband, 
and a code inspired with a different spirit from that which has dictated the 
English opinions. 



172 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

In the remarks whicli I submitted on the Trent question, I argued that, 
from an English stand-point, England could not make reclamation, and 
until she reversed her own authorities she could not in justice complain 
of the action of Captain Wilkes as illegal. I now turn from the conduct 
of England, which has settled nothing of principle involved in the ques- 
tions, to the enlightened action of France and the other Powers of Europe 
whicli have shown an interest in the case, as a matter of principle involv- 
ing neutral rights. . I find nothing to condemn, but every thing to com- 
mend, in the action of the French Government submitted to the Commit- 
tee. It was dictated by her traditional friendship for this country. There 
is no reason to believe that France was moved by any other motive than 
that expressed by her Minister of Foreign AiFairs in his letter of the 3d 
of December, 1861, in which he says that the desire of France was to 
prevent a conflict, perhaps imminent, between the two friendly Powers — 
England and the United States — and to uphold " for the rights of her own 
flag certain principles essential to the security of neutrals." There is 
notliing in this letter incompatible with the sentiments of the French nation 
toward us, expressed in the despatclies of M. Thouvenel to the French 
Minister at Washington on the 16th of May last. In that letter the French 
Emperor is represented as anxious to do all in his power toward strength- 
ening and maintaining the American Union. He says : 

" The Emperor, mdeed, has always held the gi'eat qualities of the American people in 
too high esteem, and has had it too much at heart to draw closer the bonds Avhich unite 
them to France, to look with indifference upon the calamities which now threaten tliem. 
His Majesty desires that the United States should not lose, by any political disintegration, 
their standing as a great Powei", and that they should not abdicate, to the injury of the 
general interests of civilization and liumanity, the position which their rapid and brilliant 
development has assigned them. Should, therefore, such circumstances arise that the 
friendly intentions of the Emperor should seem likely to lead to a reconciliation between 
the States of the South and those of the North, his Majesty would, with the most cordial 
enthusiasm, contribute to the extent of his influence toward the strengthening or the* 
maintenance of the Union." 

France has made no demonstration of a change of these sentiments 
from that day to the present. There is nothing in the French minister's 
despatch on the Trent affair inconsistent with these earnest avowals of 
friendship. Congress would be insensible to these tenders, did it not 
commend them to the approbation of the American people. 

Not only was there no intermeddling by France in this matter, not 
only was her tender the index of a cordial amity, but the subject-matter 
of her despatch — the rights of neutrals upon the sea — was a subject in 
which she had a common iutei'est Avith us and with all maritime Powers. 
It was a subject in which she had, at our suggestion some years since, 
taken a leading and Kvely interest. It Avas a subject the most important 
before the Paris conferences which closed the Crimean war. It was urged 
upon her attention during the past summer by our own Government. 
Her interest in it is only second to that of this Republic. It has been 
manifested in the enlightened sentiments of her publicists and the diplo- 
matic missives of her ministers. 

I purposely pretermit any discussion of the question, Avhether the 
seizure of the Trent and the arrest of certain of her passengers was right 
or wrong. It will serve no purpose now to inquire whether her passen- 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 1Y3 

gers were contraband, and tlie act of carrying them hostile. I do not pur- 
pose to reopen the controversy whether, if the seizure was right, the de- 
livery of the persons seized was right or wrong. The world is aware 
that by British precedents, the British Government could not, without 
disavowing its old policy as to what is contraband of Avar, make reclama- 
tion for the persons seized. Mr. Seward well says, " that he was not 
tempted at all by suggestions that cases might be found in history where 
Great Britain refused to yield to other nations, and even to ourselves, 
claims like that noAv before us. " Perhaps it would have been wiser had 
the Trent dispute been arbitrated by a friendly Power like that of France. 
She would, as is now apparent, have settled it by the release of the 
prisoners seized. In that case, we would have had an authoritative prece- 
dent, binding Great Britain for all time, and made in harmony with the 
liberal maritime policy which it has been the pride of this Republic to 
urge upon the nations since oiir existence, and which we have, iu the first 
years of this Government, ingrafted upon treaties with foreign Powers. 
It would have been full compensation to us for the mortification which 
was felt, when we yielded these persons to the English demand, had we 
succeeded iu crystallizing into international law that lenient and catholic 
policy with regard to neutrals, private property, and non-combatants on 
the seas which has obtained on land, and which, as Mr. Seward well says, 
is an " old, honored, and cherished American cause, not upon British 
authoi'ities, but upon principles that constitute a large part of the distinc- 
tive policy by which the United States have developed the resources of a 
continent, and thus becoming a considerable maritime Power, have won 
the respect and confidence of many nations. " 

It is doubtless true, that the United States have received from the men 
of other times and countries those suggestions as to the freedom of the 
seas and the rights of neutrals of which she has made herself the especial 
friend and champion. Such doctrines were the natural result of opposi- 
tion to the extravagant pretensions of great naval Powers. They were the 
result of natural reason, rebelling against arbitrary force. Nations have 
at different eras pretended to exclusive control of the sea, especially that 
part adjacent to their territories. Denmark claimed the Sound and other 
Baltic passes. Venice espoused the Adriatic. The Portuguese claimed 
the South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Spain once pretended to have 
exclusively the Gulf of Mexico. The gifted Selden, in his Mare Clausum, 
claimed for England the four seas adjacent to Great Britain. During the 
war with Napoleon, England claimed municipal rule over the Atlantic, 
Mediterranean, and the Baltic ; and by her orders in council and her acts 
of Parliament assumed to control the neutral commerce of those seas. 
Napoleon retaliated. America, through Jefferson, appropriately called 
these acts " a lawless system of piracy." America held that the sea was 
the common highway of all ; that the only control which one nation had 
over the sea was the curtilage of soil and jurisdiction seaward a cannou 
shot or marine league. 

This is the principle laid down by the best writers, and it is the doc- 
trine which the United States has, ever since its existence, been endeavor- 
ing to ingraft on maritime law. The vessel is the floating territory of 
the nation under whose flag it sails, and no Power can rightfully question 



174: EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

or curtail its privilege upon the sea. John Quincy Adams, folio-wing the 
principle of Grotius, nay, of the Saviour himself, declared that all belli- 
gerent practices in violation of the freedom of the seas rested on force 
and not on natural right. In 1823, as Secretary of State, he declarod to 
our Minister at Colombia the doctrines of these resolutions. But he was 
only an humble follower of Benjamin FrankUn and his compatriots of 
the Revolution. In the twelfth article of our treaty with Prussia of 

1785, these doctrines are most distinctly set forth. The reasons assigned 
by Franklin, Adams, and Jeiferson for such improvements in public law 
are not selfish, not exclusive, not national, but coextensive with the inter- 
ests of humanity. These statesmen hoped to see the day when cultiva- 
tors of the earth, fishermen, merchants, traders in unarmed ships, artists, 
mechanics, and all who are not directly engaged in the work of war, 
should receive immunity from its ravages. They denounced the practice 
of robbing merchants, either by public or private armed ships, as a rem- 
nant of ancient piracy. They wished the calamities of war softened, and 
hostilities to be made rare by removing the cupidity which pronipted 
them. Washington, in his letter to Count de Rochambeau of July 31, 

1786, spoke of this treaty with Prussia as the most liberal which had 
ever been made, as original, as marking a new era in negotiation, and as 
tending more fully to pi'oduce a general pacification than any measure 
heretofore attempted by mankind. Henry Clay, as Secretary of State, 
in his instructions to our Panama commissioners, caught the very genius 
of these principles, and sought to have them impressed upon the public 
law of this continent ; while later. President Pierce and Secretary Marcy, 
filled with the generous thought, and with an argument which has no reply, 
sought to affix them to the laws of the Avorld as the tribute of American 
statesmanship to the interests of mankind. Indeed, America, has scarcely 
a great name whose fame is not inwoven with this doctrine of free seas. 
In the time of Madison — one of the most sagacious expounders — we went 
to war with England for its settlement. Time has done what arms did 
not and what dii)lomacy could not do. To-day there is no pretension to 
search «ur ships for seamen. The globe we live upon, three-fourths of 
which is covered with water, no longer tolerates the arbitrary usages 
of the powerful ; but the weakest State as well as the greatest may com- 
pass the ends of the world without fear or hindrance. For tliese im- 
provements in the interchanges of mankind, the world owes a debt of 
gratitude to the United States. 

In the development of this distinctive policy France has ever been a 
collaborateur witli our Republic. Her interests and her inclination have 
accorded with ours. That so much cannot be said of Great Britain is 
owing, in part, to our peculiar relations with her, as her own revolution- 
ary child; in part, to her being for so many years of our maritime" 
progress a belligerent, Avhile we were a neutral, and to her chronic fear 
lest the rising Republic of the West should dispute with her the trident, 
which she has so long and so powerfully wielded. 

Whatever may be our present untoward situation with respect to our 
domestic conflicts, it is not the policy of this country to change its former 
relations toward other Powers. Peace has been the history of this nation. 
However gloomy the war cloud may lower over us, peace will continue 



FOEEIGN AFFAIRS. 175 

to increase the greatness we have achieved by its blessings. Hence our 
interest lies, not in clamoring for belligerent, but in the recognition of 
neutral rights. Tell me not that wc may become a belligerent, and then 
that this yielding of belligerent rights in favor of neutrals will be to our 
prejudice. I care not if we do become a belligerent with Great Britain, 
the greatest naval power. So long as we have a larger commerce than 
hers and a less naval force, our interest even as belligerent with her still 
lies in the protection of our private property imder neutral flags, or in oui- 
hostile flag covering the goods of friends. If we can obtain her assent to 
the Marcy doctrine, that her armed cruisers shall not harm our commerce, 
we may well agree that our privateers shall not harm hers. In case of 
the adoption of the Marcy amendment, the worst result to be apprehended 
by England in case of war with us, is the comparative uselessuess of her 
immense naval force. Her cruisers would be used only to fight our 
cruisers on the sea, or to blockade our ports. Our commerce would go 
on ; and under the improvements in mailing ships with iron, her blockades 
would be of little avail, under the guns of our Monitors. 

Therefore Ave would gain, even as belligerents with England or any 
other Power, were the doctrines I contend for embodied in the code inter- 
national. But our interests will seldom be those of belligerents ; our policy 
is ever that of peace. Neutrality has enriched us. Our peaceful attitude 
during the Napoleonic and Crimean wars not only filled the sails of our 
merchantmen with enterprise, but the coffers of our merchants with money. 
We are not an aggressive people. Our interests lie alongside of our 
civilization, and we are to conquer the material wealth of the world by 
our interchanges and treaties. Whatever, therefore, aids us in this regard 
should be the aim of our statesmen and the ambition of our people. Hap- 
pily, France, Prussia, Russia, Austria, Italy, and all the other maritime 
Powers, unless it be England, have with vis, and have expressed to us, an 
identity of interest and policy ; and these are in unison v/ith the interests, 
honor, progress, and civilization of each and every nation. 

It is not unbecoming novt^ for the Representatives of the American 
people, Avhile the discussion of these maritime questions is rife in both 
hemispheres, to give its emphatic declaration. Public opinion is one of 
the sources of international law. By its silent influences treaties are cele- 
brated, congresses of nations are convened, maxims of policy are declared, 
and usages are inaugui-ated. Such a declaration is the more becoming 
now, because our action at the beginning of the present session in approv- 
ing the seizure of the persons from the Trent is liable to be interpreted 
against the policy which we have maintained with respect to neutrals. 
Our diplomacy has ever advocated the most liberal views, while our courts 
base their decisions on what the rest of Christendom has regarded as the 
exceptional rules of English admiralty law. We have tried ever since 
our existence as a nation to change these rules of English origin by nego- 
tiation ; but our Supreme Court, with the maxim, stare decisis^ have kept 
on holding what the law of nations was at the time we were a part of 
Great Britain, and, as a consequence, our thoughts are far ahead of the 
law, and our treaties in advance of our jurisprudence. 

From France we have abundant evidence that her Government and 
people agree to the doctrines propounded to them by us in 1856, and em- 



1Y6 EIGHT YEARS ITST CONGKESS. 

bracing with the amendment of Mr. Marcjthe Paris declarations of 1856, 
which she inaugurated. If it were necessary to prove this to the Ameri- 
can Congress, I would refer to a letter of the distinguished editor of 
"Wheaton, Hon. W. Beach Lawrence, to whose learned pen I am indebted 
for many suggestions in this connection. While perusing the papers 
placed at his disposition by the last Administration, he found : — 1. An 
entire imanimity of sentiment among the minor maritime Powers in favor 
of the Marcy proposition, as necessary to give effect to the Paris declara- 
tions ; 2. The adhesion of Russia and Prussia with the most generous 
cordiality ; 3. The assent of Italy, through Count Cavour, to the Marcy 
amendment. That statesman told our minister at Turin that England was 
the only obstacle to the adoption of the principle. " She," he said, '' did 
not wish to render private property free from the devastation of war, 
Avhile she wished the United States to give up privateering, or, if unable 
to do that, to render the right valueless, by depriving the United States 
of the right which they had hitherto enjoyed in neutral ports. 4. The 
assurance by Count Walewski, in November, 1856, that the French 
Government would agree to the declaration as modified by us, though the 
formal assent was deferred, with a view to consultation with the other 
parties to the Paris declaration ; 5. A disposition on the part of English 
statesmen to consider the question, with a view to certain reservations to 
be submitted to the Powers called to examine and settle the questions. 

But whatever may be the formal alliance of England with France — in 
Turkey, Mexico, or China — France is our ally in these doctrines. She 
has ever been faithful to them. She has procured the accession of forty- 
six Powers to them. The correspondence of this Government with her 
last summer, shows that she would have been willing to have treated with 
us on their basis, as enlarged by the proposition of Secretary Marcy. Mr. 
Dayton was induced to iirge the adoption of the Marcy amendment ex- 
empting private property from seizure and confiscation, not only, as he 
says, because it Avas the wish of the President, and because of the great 
importance of securing the adoption of the principle before the United 
States should give up the right of privateering; but also "because the 
facts patent in the correspondence of the American Legation at Paris in 
1856, show that France and Russia were both favorably disposed at that 
time to the adoption of the principle of the amendment (see Mr. Marcy's 
dispatch to Mr. Mason, No. 94, dated October 4, 1856, and Mr. Mason's 
confidential letter to Mr. Dallas of December 6, 1856), and from the ob- 
vious fact that it would be the interest of all the other Powers having little 
naval force to concur in the amendment." (See papers on Foreign Affairs, 
1862, p. 210.) So that France, as early as 1856, was ready to accept 
the Marcy amendment, and but for the clause in the Paris convention, 
binding each party against further negotiation on the subject without the 
consent of all the parties, she doubtless would have accomplished her wish 
then. (See papers on Foreign Affairs, 1862, p. 109.) Her Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, in his letter of the 3d of December, 1861, most respect- 
fully protests against our falling back upon vexatious practices, against 
which in other epochs no Power has more earnestly protested than the 
United States. But, as still more significant, we find that the most dis- 
tinguished writer on the law of nations in France, or in the world — M. 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. , 177 

Hautefeuille — in the Revue Contemporaine of February last, enters his most 
learned and pointed protest against those evils of naval wai'fare which for 
" upwards of two hundred years, whenever the nation most powerful at 
sea has been engaged in hostilities, has inflicted quite as much damage 
upon neutrals as upon its adversary." lie appeals to France, to us, to 
the world, to take part in a new coalition of neutrality ; which, like that 
of Russia in 1780, will form an aggregate sufficiently formidable to coun- 
terbalance the naval superiority of any belligerents. " The maritime 
equilibrium, so important for the repose and freedom of the universe, will 
thus be established. Formed in anticipation of war, it Avill subsist in time 
of peace, and become a lasting element in the international relations of 
civilized peoples." Cotemporaneous Avitli this exposition from France, I 
observe without much surprise a retrogressive spirit from England. With- 
out surprise, for I have not been unobservant of the fact, that English 
claims to superiority on the ocean, and her continued status of belligeren- 
cy, hardly consist with such liberal sentiments as those proposed by 
France, or even those adopted by herself at the Paris conferences of 1856. 
It was therefore not surprising that Eaid Malmesbury, an ex-Foreign Sec- 
/etary of England, in a debate brought us by a late steamer, referring to 
the declaration of the Paris conferences, in relation to the inviolability of 
an enemy's goods in neutral ships, said that her Majesty's Government in 
time of war would be induced to disregard its obligatory nature. He was 
asked by Earl Granville to modify this extraordinary language. He only 
added to its force by a sentiment, which has been too often acted on by 
England, that a warlike people like the English would not be restrained, 
in the extremity of war, by a paper declaration made at Paris in 1856 ! 
In the same debate, the present Foreign Secretary, Earl Russell, volun- 
teered to say, and I think with more meaning than meets the ear, that he 
did not quite approve the declaration made at Paris ! In a more recent 
debate, on the 11th ultimo, the member for Liverpool, Mr. Horsfall, 
offered a resolution, expressing the truth, that the present state of inter- 
national law, as affecting belligerents and neutrals, is ill-defined and un- 
satisfactory. He contended that England must retreat from her Paris 
declaration or advance toward the Marcy amendment. As she stood now, 
the effect upon England would be to throw the carrying trade wholly into 
neutral hands, or to diminish her fighting power by diverting a large part 
of her naval force for convoys. But the Government opposed this move- 
ment of commerce. The Attorney-General and Secretary of AVar disap- 
proved the resolution. Lord Palmerston, concluding the debate, said 
" that the principle contended for, if carried into practice, would level a 
fatal blow at the naval power of this country, and would be an act of po- 
litical suicide." So that we may not be surprised if England recedes from 
the Paris declaration. It was not without reluctance that Lord Cowley 
agreed to the four propositions of that conference looking to the liberation 
of commerce from the shackles of tradition, barbarism, and the vicissi- 
tudes of war. Scarcely had the Paris treaty been celebrated and pub- 
lished before a resolution was offered by Lord Colchester in the House of 
Lords, declaring " the right of capturing an enemy's goods on board 
of neutral vessels to be inherent in all belligerent Powers ; the maintenance 
of this right to be of essential importance, and its abandonment of serioxis 
12 



178 EIGHT YEARS IN C0NGKES8. 

injur J to a power whose main reliance is on her naval superiority," etc. 
That resolution, though it did not pass, received the votes of over a hun- 
dred cf her Majesty's most conservative peers. 

Since then, the English Government has been ill content with the 
acquiescence its ambassador gave at the green table of Paris in 1856. 
When the present Administration of this Grovernment proposed again to 
accede to the Paris propositions, as the correspondence between Mr. 
Adams and Earl Russell shows, England utterly rejected the benignant 
and enlightened policy by which Mr. Marcy proposed to accompany the 
abolition of privateers, namely : " that the private property of the subjects 
or citizens of a belligerent on the high seas shall be exempted from seizure 
by public armed vessels of the other belligerent, except it be contraband." 
There is, as I have said, no doubt that France, but for her alliance with 
England, would have accepted this amendment. Mr. Adams, in his letter 
to Mr. Seward of July 26, 1861, says that he learned from a personal 
interview with Mr. Dayton " that there was no reason to presume that 
there was any disinclination in France to adopt the Marcy amendment. 
Neither did the reply of M. Thouvenel entirely preclude the hope of its 
ultimate success so far as the disposition of France may be presumed. 
The obstacles, if any there are, must be inferred to exist elsewhere. 
There can be no doubt that the opposition to this modification centres 
here [in London]. Independently of the formal announcement of Lord 
John Russell to me, that the proposition was declined, I have, from other 
sources of information, some reason to believe that it springs from the 
tenacity of a class of influential persons, by their age and general affinities 
averse to all sudden vai'iations from established ideas." 

During the progress of the negotiations at London, it Avas ascertained 
that the Marcy amendment was inadmissible. Then our negotiators with 
much reluctance, at least on the part of Mr. Dayton, consented to the 
Paris propositions of 1856, pure and simple, including the abolition of 
privateering, without its proper equivalent, the protection of private pi'op- 
erty from public armed vessels. I honor Mr. Dayton's reluctance. 
Such a treaty ought never to be made. It never would have been con- 
firmed by any Senate speaking for the American people — ^ncver. But it 
was tendered .without the above valuable equivalent, when lo ! the British 
Government refused even to adopt it unconditionally. It turned out, that 
her reservation was for the benefit of the insurrectionists in the United 
States. She was willing to accept the Paris propositions, provided it 
would not affect any thing " already done." The thing already done by 
her was the recognition of our insurgent States as belligerents. By her 
conduct since, in the case of the Nashville, and her diplomacy then, she 
fulfilled the prophecy of Mr. Seward, in his letter of May 21, 1861, to 
Mr. Adams : 

" If she refuse, it can only be because she is willing to become the patron of privateer- 
ing, when aimed at our devastation." — See papers on Foreign Affairs, p. V3. 

One thing is sure : this Government could not for a moment allow 
the abolition of privateers, in general, with an exception in favor of a 
domestic enemy Vv'ith a belligerent status abroad, without compromising 
the " legal character of this Government as the exclusive sovereign in 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 179 

peace and war over all the States and Territories of the Federal Union, 
and over all citizens, disloyal and loyal alike." So that our attempts to 
reform the usages of maritime law in the interests of commerce, were 
met in a spirit hostile to the liberal views of France, and hostile to the 
progressive character of the age. The unrelenting rigidity of British 
policy upon the sea, which it was hoped had been tempered with a higher 
civilization by her contact with the continental Powers at Paris in 1856, 
was again triumphant, to our discomfiture. Negotiations on the subject 
were suspended by the action of Great Britain. The Paris plenipoten- 
tiaries, on the 16th of April, 1856, undertook to settle the deplorable dis- 
putes arising out of the uncertainty of the law of neutrals and belliger- 
ents. They had seen the conflicts arising from differences of opinion as 
to the duties of neutrals and belligerents. They desired uniformity. 
To this end they adopted the declaration: 1. That privateering remains 
abolished. 2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception 
of contraband of war. 3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contrar 
band of war, are not liable to capture under the enemy's flag. 4. Block- 
ades, in order to be binding, miist be effective. The plenipotentiaries 
anticipated for these maxims the gratitude of the world. Nearly fifty 
Powers have adopted them. The United States offered to accede to them 
with the most beneficial expansion ; and again to accede to them pure 
and simple, which, in my judgment, was a most questionable and ill-ad- 
vised policy. 

So much for the history of negotiations on this subject. "What now 
of the future of these questions ? All history shows that treaties exist 
no longer than there is a power to enforce them. It is only by an alliance 
tor neutrahty, such as M. Hautefeuille proposes, that we can constrain 
England to respect the general law of nations, to which she is already a 
party, when that law is counter to her interests, traditions, and naval 
glory and supremacy. If England should make unjust pretensions with 
reference to the rights of belligerents, such a congress could settle the 
matter with authority. It is well agreed among the wisest of mankind 
now what the rules of international jurisprudence should be on these sub- 
jects. It is our duty to make them as they ought to be. 

There are other questions as to neutral rights yet to be acted upon. 
Not only ought it to be settled now, that private property shall be re- 
spected on sea as on land ; but if contraband is excepted from the invio- 
lability of the neutral flag and cargo, it ought to be fixed what is and 
what is not contraband ; whether dispatches or persons are included in 
contraband — if persons, what and who ? whether confined to military, or 
extended to civil and diplomatic, or quasi diplomatic persons ? Here is 
the pivotal point in these questions. They are insoluble, unless we know 
what contraband means. I would call attention to the last resolution, 
with reference to the meaning of contraband. It was the suggestion of 
the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the gen- 
tleman from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden], who now honors me with his 
attention. It expresses the hope that the PoAvers of the world will define 
with exactitude the meaning of contraband, with a view to the least re- 
striction on trade. Had this been done before, the Trent difficulty never 
would have occurred. That question, in a nutshell, was whether contra- 



180 EIGHT TEAES IN" CONGEESS. 

band embraced hostile ambassadors. According to the English defini- 
tion, contraband means whatever will aid the enemy. Hence the term is 
indefinite and clastic. To settle its meaning would be of great utility. 
It means gunpowder, it may mean coal. It means shot and shell, it may 
mean provisions. It means saltpetre, it may mean despatches. It means 
military men, it may mean ambassadors. It may mean any thing a bel- 
lio-erent who has the power may detei*mine. McCulloch, in his Diction- 
ary, page 881, in referring to this subject with his English inclinations 
against liberal views, says : 

"In judging of the wisdom of tliis concession, every thing depends on the interpreta- 
tion of the plirase 'contraband of war.' If it were restricted, as has usually been the 
case, to warlike stores {munitions de guerre)^ or articles directly available for warUke pur- 
poses, it would be in many respects justly censurable. For it is plain, that under the 
limitation now supposed, the trade of a belligerent Power with its colonies, or other 
countries beyond sea, might be prosecuted in neutral ships nearly to the same extent and 
with as much security during war as during peace. But it is not easy to imagine that a 
principle having such consequences should be acted upon by any Power having a prepon- 
derating naval force, in the event of her engaging in hostilities. Such Power must then 
do one of two things ; she must either consent to relinquish some of the most unportan' 
advantages to be derived from her naval ascendency, or she must reject the principle ii. 
question. And there is little doubt that she would adopt the latter alternative; and she 
might do this directly by resorting to her natural and indefeasible right to seize enemy's 
goods wherever they are to be met with ; or indirectly, by extending the list of contra- 
band articles, so as to make it include all those of any importance carried by sea into or 
from the enemy's ports. Either way would answer the pui'pose ; and we may be pretty 
well assured that, under the supposed circumstances, one or other of them would be fol- 
lowed." 

Again, he says : 

"Considered in this, its true light, the term 'contraband of war' becomes of the 
highest importance ; and there are but few products which may not be fairly brought, 
at one period or another, within the list of contraband articles. Thus, supposing that 
we had the misfortune to be engaged in a contest with a single Power, or a combination 
of Powers, which had means to intercept, cut off, or materially obstruct our supplies of 
corn, cotton, and tea, can any one- doubt ttiat our enemies would be justified, or that the\ 
would liesitatc in availing themselves of so powerful a means of annoyance ? NeutraU 
might protest against such a proceeding, on the ground'that the articles referred to had 
not hitherto been reckoned contraband of war, and they might also allege that their trade 
would be seriously prejudiced by so unusual and so illegal a proceeding. But these re- 
presentations, supposing them to be made, would not go for much. Our enemies would 
say, that in defining contraband of war every thing depended on circumstances ; and that 
as the want of the articles referred to would lay us under very considerable difficulties,, 
they were from that very circumstance properly included in the prohibited list." 

One of the chief objects of negotiation ought to be to give as much 
precision as possible to the meaning of the word " contraband," that trade 
may have as few fetters as possible. The settlement ovight to be so sol- 
emn that it would be out of the power of any one of the parties to it, 
however strong in its navy, to pursuie, when a belligerent, a practice op- 
posite to its professions in time of peace. 

Treaties have been made embodying the maxim of " free ships, free 
goods," as early as 1604, by France with the Sublime Porte. Some of 
the Christian powers of Europe adopted the same in 1716. (AVheaton's 
Law of Nations, p. 315.) But they were the mere cobwebs of peace, 
and the rough hand of war brushed them away. Never till the United 
States began to obtain exemption from searches and seizui'es, practised 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 181 

upon the neutral flag and cargo — as in 1778 from France, and in 1780 
from Russia — was thei'e any considerable progress made against the arro- 
gant belligerency of that high constable of the seas, Great Britain. Now, 
we have the opportunity of securing the fruits of our long urgency. If 
we are now successful, commerce will be enfranchised, and our nation 
■will, with its extensive and extending tonnage, take its place at the head 
of the commercial world. New York will inevitably become what Lon- 
don is, what Amsterdam and Venice were — universi orbis terrarum empo- 
rium. 

The present time is auspicious for such action by our nation. France 
invites ; Russia, Austria, Italy, and Prussia are anxious to uieet us. All 
the Powers are moving upward to the high level of our own Republic 
with regard to maritime rights. Even England may forego, under the 
pressure of a congress of nations, her barbaric code, laggard notions, iso- 
lated pride, and naval supremacy, to join in the exalted labors so eloquently 
suggested by the French publicist. We must not forget to do England 
justice. She has progi-essed. Reluctant as are her public men to give up 
her old policy, even England, through her enterprising merchants, is 
making strides toward a better condition. We would fain hope that her 
protest in the Trent affair means something more than wounded pride at 
the affront to her flag. We hope it means an inclination toward a re- 
gard for neutral rights, yet in embryo, in her policy, but to gain a full 
stature under the liberal influences of the age. We can hardly recognize 
in the England of to-day that Power Avhich for one hundred and fifty 
years, wln'le supreme on the ocean and while at war, made the position of 
a neutral more precarious than that of an enemy. The England of to- 
day, which does not pretend to revive her claim to search for English 
seamen on American vessels, but to revive which is considered by one of 
her authors as impolitic and unjust, so late as 1818, through Lord Castle- 
reagh to Mr. Rush, and in 1842, through Lord Ashburton to Mr. Web- 
ster, insisted on these barliarous and hateful rules of maritime law. This 
is progress. The England which, on the 30tli of November last, through 
Earl Russell, protested that certain individuals had been forcibly taken by 
an American ship of war from on board a British vessel, " the ship of a 
neutral Power., while such vessel was pursuing a lawful and innocent 
voyage ; an act of violence which was an affront to the British flag and a 
violation of international law," is very unlike that England — as she is 
described by one of her economists — whose mode of carrying out the Brit- 
ish claim to search and seize the property of an enemy wherever found, 
was so vexatious, overbearing, and insolent, that the vessels of neutrals 
were driven from their course, detained for hours, losing fair winds and 
fine opportunities, and their captains and crews often seized and always 
insulted ; the arbitrary officers of whose men-of-war, with unlimited and 
arbitrary power, did not treat their own crews or their own merchant 
ships with forbearance and humanity ; who despised all foreigners, partic- 
ulai-ly the Americans, often treating them with rudeness and jirrogance, 
utterly careless of causing them unnecessary delay. Here again is con- 
spicuous reform ! The England of to-day, with her Oxford professorship 
of international law and her increasing regard for the rights of others, is 
very unlike that England whose prize court decisions from 1793 to 1815 



182 EIGHT YEAP.S IN C0NGEES8. 

Strained every belligerent right to the uttermost and imposed prohibition 
on prohibition upon neutrals, until " neutrality itself was prohibited." 
Still another stride ! The England which now protests against stone 
blockades and the spoliation of harbors, hardly seems like the England in 
Napoleonic times, when she set us the example in a foreign harbor which 
we have chosen to follow in our own. This is another step forward. 
The England which now demands an effective blockade, " maintained by 
a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy," and 
which inquires carefully in her Parliament as to the number and tonnage 
of the vessels which are alleged to have run the blockade instituted by 
ourselves of our own harbors, is hardly the England which pretended that 
the whole of the seaboard of France was blockaded in consequence of 
her paper proclamation and of its geographical position with respect to 
the English coasts. Here is an immense stride ! The England of to-day, 
which disputes as to the efficiency of our blockade, with cotton at fivepencein 
New Orleans and twelvepence in Liverpool, is not the England of a half 
century ago, when by her pretences of " prevention and pui'suit," she 
made her cruisers on one side of the world the avengers of a broken paper 
blockade of the coasts on the other side ! England to-day tardily yields 
to the Paris propositions — still she yields — ^but how vmlike that England 
the belligerent, when, as Hautefeuille says, " she persecuted and destroyed 
neutral navies to preserve that naval power which, by the special favor 
of Providence, she derived from the valor of her people (Order in Coun- 
cil of 19th November, 1787), a power which she declared essential for the 
happiness and independence of mankind ! " How unlike that England of 
1787, is this England of 1854, when the Crimean war began, and when 
she renunciated her right to seize hostile goods under neutral flags, and 
allowed reasonable time for Russian vessels lying in English ports to clear 
out, and even refused letters of marque to her privateers I These late 
deviations from old English practice are both politic and mercifvd. The 
material and mercantile advantages which France and the United States 
perceive from such a policy would accrue to England in far greater meas- 
ure than by claiming technical rights, decided by her admiralty courts or 
codified in her own lex gentium. Her ancient practice was dictated by 
her desire to vindicate her maritime greatness, and crush the aspirations 
of naval competitors. It agreed with the formalized traditions of vener- 
able tribunals sanctioning the harsh customs of war, and inconsistent with 
fair play upon the seas. To sustain this practice, she reasoned thus : A 
hostile vessel, with neutral goods, rivalled her in the carrying trade. It 
was taking from nations, Avhile neutral, pro tanto certain profits, a propor- 
tion of which would eventually swell the resources of the enemy with 
whom she was at v>'ar. That must be stopped. Again : a neutral sliip, 
carrying hostile goods, likewise encouraged the commerce, extended the 
relations, and indirectly augmented the wealth of the foe. That, too, 
must be stopped. So in either case the enem}'- was benefited by the im- 
punity and damnified by the stoppage of such traffic. Her public opinion 
sanctified any Avay, direct or indirect, to cripple an enemy to England. 
Thus millions of confiscated commerce fell beneath her rapacious greed. 
Opinion and practice have changed, and England has changed with them 
in a lartre measure. But there is room for still s;reater reform on her 



FOREIGN AFFAIES. 183 

part, to say nothing of the danger of her relapse, before indicated. Pub- 
lic opinion and practice have changed, because the relative commerce of 
the world has changed during the long intervals of peace in Europe and 
America. France has noAV a navy nearly equal to that of England. She 
is no longer the timid Power upon the sea which Nelson shattered, and 
which Napoleon lamented. The commercial marine of this country has 
advanced more than fivefold since the Revolution, and from three-quar- 
ters of a million of tonnage at the close of the late war of 1812 to five 
and a half millions of tonnage at the present time ; and of that marine 
a large part has, by recent events, been inspired with the genius of 
steam, is being clad in armor of iron, and its total tonnage exceeds by 
five hundred thousand tons that of our gi-cat English rival. It is the very 
height of unwisdom for Enghsh laggards to rummage from old treatises 
on international law, from the proud-mouthed speeches uttered in Parlia- 
ment about Britannia and the waves, and from decisions of her admiralty 
courts, an obsolete claim to make herself the buccaneer or Algerine of 
the seas — the nuisance and terror of the ocean. England should rather 
consult the wisdom of her best statesmen, who, like Earl Grey in 1856, 
declared that, by the mere increase of sea-going ships, the right of search 
after the property of belligerents embarked on neutrals had become an 
utter impracticability, and all that Avas ever wi-itten by the pubhcists of 
every nation cannot make it practicable. He warned his nation then, 
that if she claimed for herself the rigbtif she must allow the same right 
to be exercised against her ; and as if -foreseeing the Trent case, he said : 

"How would British shipowners submife to the exercise of such a right if this country 
[England] should be placed in the posHion of a neutral ? How would they endure it, 
that vessels from New York or New Orleans, laden with cotton, which our manufacturers 
were anxiously expecting, shouMief stopped by French cruisers, in case France and the 
United States were at war, ami ^mvejed. to French ports, while the French courts inquired 
whether the cargoes were ^ property of Americans or of Englishmen?" 

While^ therefore, '^'e are becoming, by the pressure of domestic rebel- 
lion, more able to take care of our interests at sea, with the aid of gun- 
boats and steamers and a marine of armed cruisers and privateers, ever 
ready, so long as private property is not made inviolable to the public 
cruisers of an enemy, England has lowered her tone and altered her policy 
to conform to the changed relations which her navy bears to the rest of 
the world. Therefore no time was ever more auspicious for the assemblage 
of the maritime Powers, to create, in 1862, a neutral coalition like those 
of 1669 and 1780, " Avhich, by uniting in one body all the scattered 
forces of all neutrals, will secure to each the respect and security which 
they cannot obtain while remaining isolated." Now is the favorable time 
from which to date a new epoch in international law, of Avhich the dis- 
tingitishing feature shall be, a respect for property. I would carry it so 
far as to respect all the property of an enemy not actually employed as 
contraband, and even to soften the rigor of those rules Avhich make con- 
traband as elastic in definition as the strength which defines it is power- 
ful. Now is the time to fix the rules of blockade beyond cavil — I mean 
blockade international. I do not regard the blockade of our own ports 
as international. It is a municipal regulation to put down a rebellion, as 
to which other nations are not to be consulted, and over which, as it is a 



184 EIGHT YEAK8 EST CONGRESS. 

domestic question, they have no control. The world may not now, but 
soon will, be, ready to exempt all unfortified coasts and cities from block- 
ade, and all private property, by land and sea, from capture, except when 
used to aid the war. This would be a corollary from the proposition to 
give immunity to private property, by limiting the Avar to an armed 
duello of nations. Now is the time to stop powerful navies from irritat- 
ing searches of neutral vessels on the sea, and from conveying such ves- 
sels and the property therein belonging to the subjects of States belliger- 
ent to distant ports for confiscation. Now is the time to give vigor to 
the maxims of Mr. Webster, of August 8, 1842, that the entry into the 
vessel of a neutral by a belligerent is like the entry into its teri-itory, is 
an act of force, and is, prima facie, a wrong, a trespass, which can only 
be justified where done for some purpose allowed to form a sufiicient jus- 
tification by the law of nations, whose sphere is the ocean, and under the 
sanction of which law any merchant vessel on the seas is under the pro- 
tection of her own nation. Now is the time to give practical develop- 
ment to the great American doctrine, not by adopting the Paris declara- 
tions, unless as a preliminary step toward a complete reform of the 
maritime law, whose effect will free the seas from the whirlwinds and 
maelstroms of war, and place in the hands of commerce the palm and 
the olive — victory and peace ! 

The surrender of the insurgent ambassadors to the demand of a neu- 
tral Power is of little moment, if it be the occasion for a settlement of 
the law in favor of neutral rights. This country would, in one sense, be 
repaid for the terrible trials of its present domestic conflict, if out of it 
arises such a policy as will free the millions which are every day embarked 
upon the main from the atrocities of war. K the extent to which it is 
legitimate to injure an enemy in time of war, by land and sea, shall be 
defined in the interest of humanity through our exertions, how magnifi- 
cent will be our reward ! Millions yet unborn shall bless America ! God 
win smile upon us with signal benignity ! 

One of the topics cognate to that of neutral rights — indeed, the prin- 
ciple lying at its root — is the amelioration of war by giving to it such 
laws as wiU smooth its Avrinkled front. For this purpose a great and 
Christian nation, either in a congress of nations, or in its domestic coun- 
cils, might well inquire : First, Avhether, if war come, it is not desirable 
to make it as short as possible ; secondly, how to make it shoi't ; thirdly, 
whether its injuries to non-combatants, of whatcA^er trade, age, condition, 
and sex, tend to its brevity ? The result of such inquiries Avould show to 
the dispassionate nations that Avars are not shortened, but prolonged, by 
rapine, cruelty, pillage, and revenge. Such is the history of the savage 
tribes, and of the middle ages. I heartily agree Avith the conclusions of 
the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Thomas] who has just spoken, 
and Avho A-ery happily reached the same conclusions to which my own 
thoughts tend, Avith refei'ence to the rules of war upon the land Avith 
respect to private property. All the history of mankind shoAvs that a 
war Avherein toAvns are sacked, property confiscated, villages burned, 
fields laid Avaste, the inhabitants treated with contumely, penalties, insults, 
and barbarities, does not hurry, but procrastinates peace. By such 
means the object of the Avar, Avhich is peace, is frustrated. Atrocities are 



FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 185 

the seeds of future strife. They stimulate conflict and perpetuate hate. 
Every such contest is sure to be renewed when the two antagonists re- 
cover from their exhaustion. This reasoning seems to have been adopted 
with regard to warfare upon the Land by all the moralists of our time. 
If true I'or the land, why not for the sea? 

Again : Avar is now an affair of Government, not of individuals. No 
man can now go to war unless he becomes a pai't of the official organiza- 
tion of his Government. Hence, no spoliation of the effects of non-com- 
batants, and no appropriation of individual property without compensa- 
tion, should be allowed. Why not adopt this doctrine upon the sea, both 
with regard to public and private armed vessels? Reforms are being 
made in this connection by the silent progress of opinion and the adjudi- 
cations of the courts. Until recently the theory and practice were, that 
war dissolved contracts between individuals. Private property of ene- 
mies found in the country at the commencement of hostiuties was con- 
fiscated. But even an English judge, Lord EUenborough, declared that 
the Danish act which confiscated private debts was illegal. (6 Maule & 
Selwyn, p. 92.) And the great Powers of Europe at the commencement 
of the Crimean war provided against the spoliation of enemies' property 
found in their ports at the breaking out of hostilities. The object of re- 
form in this matter is to separate private citizens, and especially the pro- 
ducing classes, from those whose business it is to carry on the war ; and 
to exempt the former as much as possible from the consequences of war. 
This was the declared object of the American statesmen, Franklin, 
Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Quincy Adams, Clay, and Marcy, in 
the action taken by them on the occasions to which I have referred. 
What is now wanted is the formalization of these doctrines by a congress 
of the maritime Powers. 

This brings me to the question of privateers. The committee do not 
favor their abolition, except it be accompanied with such a reform, like 
that proposed by Mr. Marcy, as will obviate the necessity for their use by a 
nation like ours with a large commerce and a small navy. Privateering 
may be a denationalization of the contest for private gain, but public 
spoliation of private property is none the less detestable. Both inflict great 
injury upon one nation, without corresponding benefit to the other. In 
our time, steam has greatly alleviated the injuries caused by privateering. 
Even that smart craft, the Sumter, is but an accident and an exception. 
The United States has been willing to abolish privateering, on the prin 
ciple that private property of unoffending non-combatants, though enemies, 
should be exempt from the ravages of war. This principle must be 
adopted as a principle. Unless it be adopted as a principle, there is 
nothing gained, but much disadvantage, inequality, and loss. If you dis- 
allow privateers to prey on private property, and allow public vessels of 
war to do it, what principle is gained? The principle involved is the 
protection of property, not the mode of its destruction. If you are to 
except property from seizure by private armed vessels, and allow pub- 
lic cruisers to do the same thing, you might as well say that steam 
vessels should be allowed to prey on private property, but sailing vessels 
ought to be forbidden. Indeed, it is far more wrongful to allow public 
than private vessels to commit such devastation. The American prin- 



186 • EIGHT TEAES EST CONGEESS. 

ciple must be adopted, otherwise the surrender of privateering is only a 
partial alleviation of the injuries to private property on the sea. So long 
as private property can be seized or molested by public armed ci'uisers, it 
enjoys no immunity ; it might as well be at the mercy of privateers. 
Says Mr. JMai'cy : 

" If such property is to remain exposed to seizure by ships belonging to the navy of 
the adverse part}', it is extremely difBcult to perceive why it should not, in like manner, 
be exposed to seizure by privateers, which are, in fact, but another branch of the public 
force of the nation commissioning them. If it be urged that a participation in the prizes 
is calculated to stimulate cupidity, that, as a peculiar objection, is removed by the fact 
that the same passion is addressed by the distribution of prize money among the officers 
and ships of a regular navy." 

Therefore, Mr. Marcy was in favor of relying upon our mercantile 
marine to protect our commerce, until private property received fuU immu- 
nity from public armed vessels as well as privateers. He apprehended 
that, if privateers were abandoned, the dominion over the seas would be 
surrendered to those Powers which adopt the policy and which have the 
means of keeping up large navies. That Power Vvhich has a decided naval 
superiority would be potentially the mistress of the ocean. Hence Eng- 
land refused Mr. Marcy's proposition. Hence France, Austria, Prussia, 
Russia, Italy, and other maritime Powers would accept it. For, if priva- 
teers Avere abolished and private property were respected by both public 
and private armed ships, the dominion of the ocean would be given up to 
the pursixits of peace, nations would find it for their interest to keep but a 
small navy, and the calamities of Avar would be confined to belligerents 
themselves, Avhile neutrals Avould pursue their ordinary trade prosperously 
and unmolested. In that event, it would be seen that it is neither desir- 
able, dignified, nor effective to injure the unoffending merchant, and that 
liberal concessions to neutral flags and neutral cargoes Avould be an advan- 
tage to the State granting them as well as to the State Avith Avhich it Avas 
at Avar. Then it Avould be seen, too, that it is neither chivah'ic nor Chris- 
tian to invoh'e individuals in the horrors of a war in which they took no 
part, either in its origin or prosecution. 

I do not despair of bringing England into the alliance for neutral, 
rights, at least so far as privateering is concerned. She Avould abolish it 
to-morrow, so far as the United States are concerned, but she is loth to 
giA'e up her immense navy, which is our equiA'alent for the abolition. She 
has a lively recollection, recently refreshed by Mr. Bright, of Avhat our 
privateers did for her commerce in our late Avar. In 1814, her tonnage 
was three million five hundred thousand tons, and her exports Avere 
£40,000,000, and her imports the same ; and during the tAvo years of that 
war our privateers took tAventy-fi\'e hundred of her ships, Avorth £21,000,- 
000, or 8107,000,000. Now, with a tonnage four times as great, betAA^een 
twelve and tliirleen milUons of tons, with imports and exports upwards 
of £120,000,000, and with the American marine increased even more, 
what might not England suffer from our militia of the sea ? Do you not 
think that, in fear of the renewal of such consequences, she will be anxious 
to make us her belligerent, or that, if thus anxious, she will not agree 
to relieve private property from captm-e by public as well as private 
cruisers ? 

If on land Ave apply these principles to private property, Avhy should 



FOREIGN AFFAIES. 187 

•we not further limit the consequences of war by lessening the objects of 
its attack ; in other words, by narrowing tlie arena of strife upon the sea 
as well as upon the land ; by making war a duel between combatants and 
not a devastation of neutrals? If we, narrow the theatre of war on land 
to the camp and beleaguered fort or city, Avhy on the water should it not 
be narrowed to the ocean armament and the blockaded port or assailed 
fort? If upon land we do not infest tlie tranquil home with violence, and 
if the graces of art and the libraries of knowledge are free from the 
spoiler, why destroy the peaceful occupations of commerce on the sea in 
the hot passions of war? Why place in jeopardy the immense trading 
interests of nations? Why expend immense sums in insuring cargoes 
from the '.' king's enemies " ? Why place before the cupidity of men or 
nations the golden freightage of California and AustraUa, and the steamers 
and packets which connect Europe with America, and both with the 
Orient? Why offer up to a worse than heathen fury the peaceful 
craft which, at great peril, supply our daily wants, and waft to us the 
teas and spices, sugars and silks, of the world? Why arouse the ardors 
of war in despoiling neutral commerce under suspicions of hostility? 
Why not forever banish from that common of the world — the free sea — 
the prying, avaricious, and revengeful belligerent, whether he sail under 
a letter of marque or a legal commission as a public cruiser? Why com- 
pel the neutral to arm, or what is worse, to profit slyly by the restrictions 
of war and the chances of immunity? Why embroil the commerce of 
mankind Avith the difficulties and dangers of a quarrel between two 
monarchs, or a punctilio between two ministers, resulting in war, and a 
war too which would inflame other nations in a general conflagration? 
Why not imitate the benign example of Providence, by ruling the raging 
of the seas ; or the more beautiful example of the Saviour, who said to 
the temjjestuous waves, " Peace^ he still ! " How eminently desirable, 
therefore, it is to prevent such calamities by fixed and authoritative rules 
of international conduct ! How desirable for belligerents ! How much 
more so for neutrals ! Such reforms as I have indicated must be the 
product of public opinion. In this age, the empire of opinion is only di- 
vided by the reign of that universal conscience which is informed and in- 
spired by its teachings. When these influences rule in the cabinets and 
councils of nations, we may hail their supremacy as the " instauratio 
magna " of juridical reason in the world of nations. For the purpose 
of contributing to that opinion and conscience, which is the source of the 
law of nations, and of expressing the judgment of the American Con- 
gress and people, the Committee will report back the resolutions last re- 
ferred to them, with an amendment, thanking the other Powers besides 
France, for their liberal sympathy in behalf of neutral rights. I trust 
that the American Congress will adopt them, and thus vindicate and 
elevate into its proper place the great American doctrine, which would 
enfranchise commerce, guarantee peace, and give an impulse to civiliza- 
tion. 



SECESSION. 

SECESSION REFUTED AND DENOUNCED — PLEA FOR COMPROMISE — WARNINGS 

TO NORTH AND SOUTH WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES PREDICTED THE 

MISSISSIPPI RIVER APPEAL FOR NATIONALITY. 

This speech was delivered in the midst of the excitement of actual se- 
cession. It was a difficult duty for a Representative, who stood between 
the extremes and appealed to them for moderation, to reach a class of 
men whose characteristics were immoderation and violence. Anxious to 
keep the peace and avert war, and at the same time unyielding as to the 
Union, I was compelled to weigh carefully each word, lesi; what was 
intended for oil on the waters, might be oil on the flames. This speech 
was delivered January 6, 1861. 

Mr. Chairman : I speak from and for the capital of the greatest of 
the States of the great West. That potential section is beginning to be 
appalled at the colossal strides of revolution. It has immense interests 
at stake in this Union, as well from its position as its power and patriot- 
ism. We have had infidelity to the Union before, but never in such a i 
fearful shape. We had it in the East during the late war with England. . 
Even so late as the admission of Texas, Massachusetts resolved herself out t 
of the Union. That resolution has never been repealed ; and one would 
infer, from much of her conduct, that she did not regard herself as bound I 
by our covenant. Since 1856, in the North, we have had infidelity to the 
Union, more by insidious infractions of the Constitution, than by open 
rebellion. Now, sir, as a consequence, in part, of these very infractions, , 
we have rebellion itself, open and daring, in terrific proportions, with 
dangers so formidable as to seem almost remediless. 

From the time I took my seat this session, I have acted and voted in 
every way to remove the causes of discontent and to stop the progress of rev- 
olution. At the threshold, I voted to raise the committee from each State ; 
and I voted against excusing the members who sought to withdraw from 
it, because I believed then that such a committee, patriotically constituted, 
had in it much of hope and safety ; and because, to excuse members from 






SECESSION. 189 

serving on it, upon the ground of secession, was to recognize the heresy. 
I am ready to vote now for any saUitary measure which will bring peace 
and preserve the Union. Herodotus relates that when Mardonius was 
encamped in Boeotia, before the battle of Plataja, he and fifty of his offi- 
cers were invited to meet the same number of Thebans at a banquet, at 
which they reclined in pairs, a Persian and a Theban upon each couch. 
During the entertainment one of the Persians, Avith many tears, predicted 
to his Tlieban companion the speedy and utter destruction of the invading 
army, and when asked why he used no influence with Mardonius to avert 
it, he answered : 

" When one would give faithful counsel, nobody is willing to believe him. Although 
many of us Persians are aware of the end we are coming to, we still go on, because we 
are bound to our destiny ; and this is the very bitterest of a man's griefs, to see clearly, 
but to have no power to do any thing at all." 

I believe, sir, that the events now transpiring are big with disaster to 
my country. I have done my humble part for years to prevent them ; 
but I do not see now that any effort on my part can avail ; and this is the 
bitterest of a man's grief. It is in such a peril as this that the heart spon- 
taneously prays for a nearer communication with a divine prescience. 
We long for some direction from a superior power, in whose great mind 
the end is seen from the beginning. At least, one might wish for some 
magic mirror of Merlin, in which to see the foes of onr country approach, 
so as rightly to guard against them. 

Four Stales have, in so far as they could by their own act, separated 
from our Federal Union. This is one of the stern facts which this Congress 
has to encounter. The Government is passing through one of those his- 
toric epochs incident to all nationalities. Our prosperity has made us 
proud, rich, intolerant, and self-sufficient ; and therefore prone to be re- 
bellious. We have waxed fat — are doing well, " tempestuously well." 
Ascending to the height of national glory, through national unity, we are 
in danger of falling by our own dizziness. We are called upon to break 
down and thrust aside the very means of our ascent — the Constitution 
itself. 

In such a time, the bitter crimination and vain threats of party and 
of sections are out of place. They should not turn the people of the 
North from doing their whole duty to the South ; nor the South from a 
more deliberate review of its past, and a more prudential view of its per- 
iloiis future. No man has the right to say or do aught that wiU further 
exasperate the public sentiment of the South. No good man in the North 
can oppose any measm'e of honorable recession from wrong. I cannot 
speak of South Carolina in the tone and temper of some. She has been 
a part of our national life. Her blood is in our veins ; her Marions, 
Sumters, and Pinckneys are ours. Eutaw, Cowpens, and Camden ; are 
they not a part of that glory, which can no more be separated from the 
Union than the dawn from the sun ! Whatever may be our indignation 
against her, or our duty to ourselves, let us remember that public senti- 
ment is not to be reached by threat or denunciation. Our Government 
depends for its execution on public sentiment. To that sentiment alone, 
in its calmer mood, are we to look for a restoration of a better feeling. 
When that feeling comes, it will be hailed like the sea-bird which visited 



190 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

the sea-tossed caravel of Columbus — as the harbinger of a firm-set foot- 
ing beyond. Other facts of a similar perilous character will soon trans- 
pire. Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana will assuredly follow the erratic 
course of South Carolina. This fact must soon be encountered. South 
Carolina has been singing her Marseillaise, and the waves of the Gulf 
make accordant music in the revolutionary anthem. It but echoes the 
abolitionism of the North and West ; for sciU'cely had the song died away 
on the shores of Lake Ei'ie, before South Carolina took it up with a 
wilder chorus ! Extremes thus meet. Extremes north have aided, if not 
conspired with, extremes south, in the work of disintegration. 

That work will go on. I know that we are very slow to believe in 
any sign of dissolution. We have faith in our luck. We have trust in 
a certain inventive faculty, which has never yet faUed us, either in me- 
chanical or political expedients. Our politics are plastic to emergencies. 
Still I must warn the people that it is the well-grounded fear, almost the 
foregone conclusion of the patriotic statesmen here, that the work of 
breaking up wiU go on, until the entire South shall be arrayed against the 
entire North. 

In view of these facts, I will discuss these propositions: 1. That se- 
cession is not a right in any possible relation in which it can be viewed ; 
to tolerate it in theory or practice is moral treason to patriotism and good 
government. 2. That while it may not involve such direful consequences 
as other revolutions, still it is revolution. 3. That every effort of concil- 
iation should be exhausted to check it, before force is applied. 4. That 
if the North does not do her part fully in recession from aggression, it 
will be impossible to unite the northern people, or any portion of the 
southern people, in repressing secession. 5. That if the South will make 
a patient endeavor, equal to the great occasion, to secure her rights in the 
Union, I believe that she will succeed ; and if she is then repulsed, it wiU 
be impossible for her to receive any detriment from the North ; but she 
will depart in peace. 6. If she go inconsiderately, as some States are 
going, the country may incur the fearful hazard of war. 7. If the South 
press the one hard overmastering question upon the North, and follow it 
up with seizure of forts and revenue, cannonading of our vessels, and 
other aggressive acts, without giving an opportunity for conciliation, there 
will be no power in the conservatism of the North to restrain the people. 
No sacrifice will be considered too great to make in the protection and 
defence of the Union. 8. That, in the present state of facts, so long as 
the revenues can be collected on land or sea, and the forts and harbors 
can be commanded by the Federal Government, that Government must 
be, as to these matters, the Government de facto, as well as de jure ; and 
that so long as this status can be maintained by the Executive, it should 
be done by all the legal forces of the Government. 

I would not exaggerate the fearful consequences of dissolution. It is 
the breaking up of a Federative Union ; but it is not like the breaking up 
of society. It is not anarchy. A link may fall from the chain, and the 
link may still be perfect, though the chain have lost its length and its 
strength. In the uniformity of commercial regulations, in matters of war 
and peace, postal arrangements, foreign relations, coinage, copyrights, 
tariff, and other Federal and national affairs, this great Government may 



SECESSION. 191 

be broken ; but in most of the essential liberties and rights which 
Government is the agent to establish and protect, the seceding State has 
no revolution, and the remaining States can have none. This arises from 
that refinement of our polity Avhich makes the States the basis of our 
instituted order. Greece was broken by the Persian power ; but her mu- 
nicipal institutions remained. Hungary has lost her national crown ; but 
her home institutions remain. South Carolina may preserve her consti- 
tuted domestic authority ; but she must be content to glimmer obscurely 
remote, rather than shine and I'cvolve in a constellated band. She even 
goes out by the ordinance of a so-called sovereign convention, content to 
lose, by her isolation, that youthful, vehement, exultant, progressive life, 
which is our nationality ! She foregoes the hopes, the boasts, the flags, 
tlie music, all the emotions, all the traits, and all the energies, which, 
when combined in our United States, have won our victories in war and 
our miracles of national advancement. Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, 
in his inaugiu'al, regretfully " looks back upon the inheritance Sovith Car- 
olina had in the common glories and triumphant power of this wonderful 
Confederacy, and faUs to find language to express the feelings of the 
human heart as he turns from the contemplation." The ties of brother- 
hood, interests, lineage, and history, are all to be severed. No longer 
are we to salute a South Carolinian with the " ide7n sententiam de repuh- 
lica" which makes unity and nationality. What a prestige and glory are 
here dimmed and lost in the contaminated reason of man ! 

Can we realize it? Is it a masquerade, to last for a night, or a real- 
ity to be managed with rough, passionate handling? It is sad and bad 
enough ; but let us not overtax our anxieties about it as yet. It is not 
the sanguinary regimen of the French revolution ; not the rule of assig- 
nats and guillotine ; not the cry of " Vivent les Rouges ! A mort les gen- 
darmes ! " but as yet, I hope I may say, the peaceful attempt to withdraw 
from the burdens and benefits of the Republic. Thus it is unlike every 
other revolution. Still it is revolution. It may, according as it is man- 
aged, involve consequences more terrific than any revolution since govern- 
ment began. 

If the Federal Government is to be maintained, its strength must not 
be frittered away by conceding the theory of secession. To concede se- 
cession as a right, is to make its pathway one of roses, and not of 
diorns. I would not make its pathway so easy. If the Government has 
any strength for its own preservation, the people demand it should be put 
forth in its civil and moral forces. Dealing, however, with a sensitive 
public sentiment, in which this strength I'eposes, it must not be rudely 
exercised. It should be the iron hand in a glove of velvet. Firmness 
should be allied with kindness. Power should assert its own prerogative, 
but in the name of law and love. If these elements are not thus blended 
in our policy, as the Executive purposes, our Government will prove either 
a garment of shreds or a coat of mail. We want neither. 

Our forts have been seized ; our property taken ; our flag torn down ; 
our laws defied ; our jurisdiction denied ; and, that worst phase of rev- 
olution, our ship sent under our flag to the relief of a soldier doing his 
duty, fired upon and refused an entrance at one of our own harbors. 
Would that were all ! The President informs us, in his last message, 
that — 



192 EIGHT YEAES EST CONGEESS. 

" In States which have not seceded, the forts, arsenals, and magazines of the United 
States have been seized. This is far the most serious step which has been taken since the 
commencement of the troubles. This public property has long been left without garrisons 
and troops for its protection, because no person doubted its security under the flag of the 
country in all the States of the Union. Besides, our small army has scarcely been suffi- 
cient to guard our remote frontiers against the Indian incursions. The seizure of this 
property, from all appearances, has been purely aggressive, and not in resistance to any at- 
tempt to coerce a State or States to remain in the U7iion." 

All that the President has done is defensive ; all that he has resisted 
has been aggression. He proposes no aggression ; nor would I favor it. 
He would maintain the laws and protect property ; what else can he do ? 

These facts have to be met — how ? By the conquest of all the people 
of a State? By the declaration and wager of war? I answer, by the en- 
forcement of the laws and the protection of our property in a constitutional 
manner. This is the answer I have already voted in this House, in vot- 
ing for the resolution of the gentleman from New Jersey. But is it asked, 
how will you enforce the laws and keep forts and property, without war? 
I will answer : First, repeal here every law making ports of entry at the 
recusant cities or towns ; and thus avoid as much trouble as possible. 
That is in our power. Second, libel and confiscate in admiralty every 
vessel which leaves such ports without the Federal clearance. Third, 
collect the revenue and preserve the property, and only use such force as 
will maintain the defensive. But again it is asked, is not this coercion 
against a Government de facto, established by the consent of all the peo- 
ple of a State under an assumed legal right? I answer, South Carolina 
is not de facto the Government as to these Federal matters, so long as the 
Federal Government can hold her harbors, shut in her ships, and collect 
the revenue. Who can deny that proposition ? But still it is asked, will 
not the use of force in executing the laws, and preserving our property, 
result in civil war ? Is there any practical difference between the enforce- 
ment of law when resisted by so large an aggressive power, and the ac- 
tual state of war ? Here is the Sphinx of our present anomalous situation. 
I do not choose now to say what I will do, in case a certain result fol- 
lows the performance of the present duty. It is enough for me now to do 
that duty of the present. But that judgment which makes no discrimina- 
tion between the enforcement of the laws and defence of property, and the 
actual state of war, must be palsied by undue fear of consequences. There 
is nothing more plainly distinguished by precedent and in experience, than 
the difference between the civil authority and the war-making power. True, 
the military arm may be invoked to aid the civil authority, but it must be 
subordinate to it in many most essential particulars. It is then the sword 
of the magistrate, and not of the soldier. Says Chief Justice Taney, in 
the Rhode Island case : 

" Unquestionably, a State may use its military power to put down an armed insurrec- 
tion too strong to be controlled by the civil authority. The power is essential to the ex- 
istence of every Government ; essential to the preservation of order and free institutions ; 
and is as necessary to the States of this Union, as to any other Government." — 1 Hoio- 
ard, 45. 

This Government has had insurrections, and has quelled them by the 
civil authority, with the aid of the militia, and "wdthout martial law. 
The Shays rebellion and the whiskey iusurrection were put down by the 



SECESSION. 193 

posse comitatus. The writ of habeas corpus was not suspended by the 
United States. But, even in extreme cases, where the President called 
out the militia to suppress actual array and violence, without a law of 
Congress autliorizing it, the force was only to be used with a view to 
cause the laws to be duly executed. All arrests were made under civil 
authority. Trials were had as in civil cages. In Pennsylvania, in 1793, 
the expedition was not in its nature belligerent ; but it was to assist the 
marshal. (7 Howard, 80 and 81.) Washington enjoined strictly the 
subordination of the military to the civil power, and went in person to see 
that his orders were obeyed. The very genius and structure of our Con- 
stitution would forbid the making of war, in its sense of aggression, against 
any State of the Confederacy. But, unless the power to enforce reside 
somewhere in the Government, it is virtually no government at all. It is 
a garment of shreds. If the force is of that irresponsible kind called war, 
the Government is then worse than a failure. It then wears a coat of 
mail. But if it have the force to maintain itself, and subordinate to itself 
the military which it may use in its defence, then it is a government. It 
then wears the robe of State ! 

The time does not yet call for threats of coercion by martial or other 
means. It only calls for defence from those who are aggressiye. I would 
reserve this power of coercion, as King Arthur did his diamond shield. 
He ever kept it out of sight covered with a veil, and only uncovered it to 
fight monsters and alien enemies. 

I call this secession, revolution. I will not in an American Congress, 
with an oath on my conscience to support the Constitution, argue the right 
to secede. No such right can ever be had, except by amendment of the 
Constitution, legalizing such secession. It is a solecism to speak of the 
right of secession. It is revolution ; and the burden of proof is on him 
who begins it, to show why he seeks the change. The combined reason 
of the ages has fixed in its maxims of thought, rules to govern the actions 
of men and nations, which no one can overrule without great criminality. 
These rules require first that revolution must have no light and transient 
cause. To overthrow a despotism, the causes must be of grave weight. 
A fortiori, what must be the grievance to justify a revolt against a Govern- 
ment so free as ours ! Besides, there must be a reasonable hope of a 
happy and successful termination. Otherwise histor-y, with her judicial 
prescript, wiU ban those who begin it to an eternity of retribution. 

There must be in every State some power to Avhich all others yield, 
competent to meet every emergency. No nation can be consigned to 
anarchy by some absurd contrivance, either in the shape of personal lib- 
erty bills or secession ordinances. In America, we have a national Con- 
stitution. Under it, we have United States citizenship. To it we owe 
and swear allegiance. It may be a compact ; but it is a government 
also. It may be a league ; but it has authority, " operative," as Mr. 
Madison holds, " directly on the people." It may reach States as States ; 
but it does more ; it reaches the people of the States through its execu- 
tive, judicial, and legislative departments. If it cannot declare war against 
a State, it is because a State is a part of itself, and not quoad hoc a for- 
eign and independent State. Its Constitution is the supreme law of the 
land; and though, as Chief Justice Marshall says (1 Wheaton, 304), 
13 



194 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGKESS. 

" the sovereign powers vested in the State governments by their respective 
constituencies remain unaltered and unimpaired, yet they remain so, ex- 
cept so far as they were granted to the Government of the United States." 
I could cite Marshall, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Story, Duer, and 
Webster, almost every student, expounder, and executor of the Constitu- 
tion, to show these conclusions to be irrefragable. It is an absurdity to 
contend that States, which voluntarily surrendered such portions of their 
sovereignties as were requisite for a national government, can be the equal 
in power of that national government. In the name of the people, the 
Constitution asserts its own supremacy and that of the laws made in pur- 
suance thereof. It is supreme, by the consent of South Carolina herself, 
" over the constitutions and laws of the several States." If, then. South 
Carolina attempt, as she has by her ordinance, to annul her connection 
with this national system, does she not usurp a power of the General 
Government ? Does she not infringe on the rights of Ohio ? Is it not 
a plain violation of the permanent obligation she is under as one of its 
members ? Nay, she not only breaks her oath of fealty to the United 
States Constitution, but she breaks her oath to her own constitution, 
which requires that oath. 

Am I referred by members of my own party to our platform and 
principles indorsing the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions? Am I told 
that the sacred principles of State rights declared by Jefferson and Mad- 
ison, as a check against the usurpations of a consolidated Federal Power, 
allow that each State may so judge of the infraction of the Constitution, 
and the means and measures of redress, that it may go out of the Union ? 
These Virginia and Kentucky resolutions are misinterpreted. Judge 
Marshall, however federal his views, in a letter to Judge Story of July 
31, 1833 (Story's Life and Letters, p. 135), is an honest witness to this 
misinterpretation. He says : « 

"The word 'State rights,' as expounded by the resolutions of 1798 and the report of 
1Y99, construed by our Legislature, has a charm against which all reasoning is vain. 
Those resolutions and that report constitute the creed of every politician who hopes to 
rise in Virginia ; and to question them, or even to adopt the construction given hy their 
author, is deemed political sacrilege." 

This Government was intended to be perpetual. It was adopted in 
toto, and forever. Says Mr. Madison : " The idea of reserving the 
right to withdraw was started, considered, and abandoned ; worse than 
rejected." Judge Marshall says : " The instrument was not intended 
to provide merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure 
through a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the in- 
scrutable decrees of Providence." It was, therefore, provided with means 
for its own amendment. By the Legislatures of three-fourths of the 
States, there is a means of amendment ; and in that way alone can a 
State ^vithdl•aw. Nullification and secession, said Mr. Madison, are tAvin 
heresies, and should be buried in the same grave. General Jackson held 
that secession does not break a league, but it destroys the unity of 
a nation ; hence, he argued that it is an offence against the whole Union. 
To say that a State may constitutionally secede, is to say that the consti- 
tutional elements were poisoned at the birth of the nation, and, of mahce 
prepense, were intended to kill our national life ! Such reasoning over- 



SECESSION. 195 

throws all government. It is to affirm that the tribunal appointed for 
the arbitrament of mooted questions under the Constitution, or that the 
means for its own amendment, shall be set aside at the pleasure of one 
of the parties to be affected. Monstrous sophistry ! Are gentlemen of the 
South aware that it is from this twin heresy that the Republicans have 
drawn their arguments for their personal liberty bills and for their re- 
pudiation of the fugitive slave law? The very chief justice of Ohio, so 
recently reindorsed for his seditious decision in the Oberlin fugitive case, 
bases his adjudication on the usurpations of the Federal Government. 
He, like South Carolina, denies that "the decisions of the usurping party, 
in favor of the validity of its own assumptions, can^ settle anything." 
(Ex parte Bushnell, 9 Ohio State Eeports, 227.) He warns against the 
" practical omnipotence of the Federal Government by making authorita- 
tive the judgment of its judicial tribunals." He sang the Marseillaise in 
his ermine from the supreme bench, as South Carohna sings it in her 
convention. 

I would, therefore, guard against the least recognition of this right of 
secession, or of nullification, which is the lesser type of the same disease. 
It would, I say, destroy all government. It would dissolve the united 
mass of powers now deposited in the Union into thirty-three separate and 
conflicting States ; each with a flag, a tariff, an army, a foreign policy, a 
diversity of interests, and an idiosyncrasy of ideas. Nay, that would be 
tolerable ; but it would do more and worse. It would disintegi'ate States, 
counties, towns ; tear cities from their places on the map ; disorder finan- 
ces, taxes, revenue, tarifis ; and convert this fabric, now so fair and firm 
that it seems built on the earth's base, and pillared with the firmament, 
into a play-house of cards, built on a base of stubble. It would thus de- 
stroy the established order. And is such order among men, with a view 
to permanency, nothing? The North has rights, property, interests, re- 
lations in the South, not to be sundered without loss ; and the South in 
the North, vice versa. Is this nothing? Is depreciation of property, de- 
pression of business, loss and lack of employment, withdrawal of capital, 
derangement of currency, increase of taxes, miscarriage of public works 
and enterprise, destruction of State credit, the loss of that national sym- 
metry, geography, strength, name, honor, unity, and glory, which publi- 
cists tell us are themselves the creators and guardians of cash, credit, and 
commerce — are these consequences nothing? Surely such a mass of 
complicated interests — the growth of years, clinging, with root and fibre, 
to the eternal rocks of public stability — cannot be uptorn without great 
struggle and stupendous crime. 

I wish that I could contemplate secession as a peaceful remedy. But 
I cannot. It must be a forcible disruption. The Government is framed 
so compactly in all its parts, that to tear away one part, you tear the 
whole fabric asunder. It cannot be done by consent. There is no au- 
thority to give consent. The Constitution looks to no catastrophe of the 
kind. It is a voluntary, violent, and ex parte proceeding. A majority of 
the States, and a great majority of the people, are hostile to it. In this 
angry and warlike disruption of the compact, where shall we find our 
more perfect Union, the establishment of justice, domestic tranquillity, 
provision for the common defence, the promotion of the general welfare. 



196 EIGHT YEAE8 IN CONGEESS. 

and the security of the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity? In 
this light, the ordinance of South Carolina becomes an offence ; and in 
case a sufficient number of others followed, to the injury of any, it would 
be worse than an offence. In the cases of Texas and Florida, Louisiana 
and California, for which millions were paid, the inquiry would be made 
whether it Avould not b'^ a fraud so colossal that neither language nor law 
can measure it. 

Mr. Reagan. I would ask the gentleman when a dollar has been 
paid for Texas ? 

Mr. Cox. I cannot give way. My time is limited. Besides, the 
same question was asked in the Senate ; and Judge Douglas answered 
it. The country knows both question and answer. I proceed. If, then, 
South Carolina can dispense with an amendment of the Constitution to 
which she solemnly acceeded on the 23d of May, 1788, cannot she dis- 
pense with other portions of that instrument ; ay, even with this American 
Congress ? The whole framework of our Government, by the action of 
separate States, may thus be swept away. This Congress may be dis- 
solved, if not by the military usurpation which dissolved the Long Par- 
liament, or expelled the Council of Five Hundred from the Orangery of 
St. Cloud, yet by the very impotence of its organism, as the Confedera- 
tion dissolved under its imperfect articles, to give place to this more per- 
fect Union ! 

What justification does South Carolina offer for this act? "Fifteen 
States," says her declaration, " have deliberately refused for years to fulfil 
their constitutional obligations." It refers to the fourth article of the Con- 
stitution for the specific cause of grievance. But is there not now, since 
the vote in this House the other day on the personal liberty bills, when 
the demands of returning public justice made even the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Lovejot] recede from his ultraism, a reasonable hope of 
curing these evils ? Again : is there not the Supreme Court, as to whose 
fidelity no question is raised in the South ? And are these peculiar wrongs 
remediless in that forum? The Governor of Kentucky has already ar- 
raigned the recreant executive of Ohio for his delinquency under a kindred 
constitutional clause. Why may you not exhaust your remedies in the 
courts before you raise the ensign of revolt ? J£ you would have public 
opinion correct the errors of the North as to fugitives from justice and 
labor, already assurances come from all quarters that such remedy will 
be given. Republican Governors and Legislatures are beginning to re- 
cede from their aggressive acts. Already Ohio has begun this work of 
redress. 

The fugitive slave law may be the ostensible reason for secession, or 
ancillary to the real grievance. Aside from certain economic reasons, 
which have ever impelled South Carolina, and which I will not now con- 
sider, the real gi'ievance consists in the apprehension of slave insurrections 
and abolition, under the auspices of an Executive who, though not yet 
inaugurated, was elected on a principle of hostility to the social system 
of the South. Or, to give it the strongest statement, which I find in a 
pamphlet signed by the member from Arkansas [Mr. Hindman], " The 
' Republican candidates wei'e elected upon a platform destructive of our 
rights, branding our institutions as infamous, decreeing the equality of the 



SECESSION. 197 

negro with ourselves and our children, and dooming us, in the end, with 
murderous certainty, to all the horrors of insurrection and servile war." 
He holds : " that to inaprison slavery for ever in the States where it now 
exists, will, in time, overburden the land with the predominating increase 
in the ratio of blacks to whites, until there wiU be a conflict for supremacy 
of races, and the blacks will be exterminated ; or vjise the white man must 
abandon his country for ever to the negro." I will grant the full force of 
this /ear, though not the sufficiency of this or any mere fear, as a cause to 
justify revolution. The Union men of the North began to warn against 
the dawning of this dangerous geographical movement in 1856. They 
repeated then, aud then not in vain, the farewell words of Washington. 
From every press and busting which a Democrat could command, this 
evil day was prophesied. But we were Cassandras. Unbelieving men 
derided us as doughfaces, and sneered at us as Union-savers. The patri- 
otic Choate, in one of his weird and wondrous prophecies, in 1855, with 
the pain of anxiety upon his brow, put on record his deliberate and inex- 
tinguishable opposition to this geographical party. He regarded the con- 
test then as the stupendous trial and peril of our national life. Admitting 
faults South and faults North, yet turning to the battle years of the Re- 
public and its baptism of fire, he shrank aghast at the moral treason of 
attempting to weave and plait the two northern wings of the old national 
parties into a single northern one, and cut the southern wing oft" altogether, 
as neither far-sighted nor safe, however new and bold. Let me give his 
statement of the complaint, for he stated it in advance as strongly as it can 
now be stated : 

" To combine these parties thus against each other geographically — to take the whole 
vast range of the free States, lying together, sixteen out of thirty-one, seventeen millions 
out of five or six and twenty millions — the most populous, the strongest, the most ad- 
vancing — and form them in battalion against the fewer numbers and slower growth and 
waning relative power on the other side ; to bring this sectional majority under party 
drill and stimulus of pay and rations ; to offer to it, as a party, the government of our 
country, its most coveted honors, its largest salaries, all its sweets of patronage and 
place ; to penetrate and fire so mighty and so compact a mass with the still more delicious 
idea that they are moving for human rights and the equality of man ; to call out their 
clergy from the pulpit, the library, the bedside of the dying, the chair of the anxious in- 
quirer, the hearth of the bereaved, to bless such a crusade ; to put in requisition every 
species of rhetoric and sophistry to impress on the general mind the sublime and impres- 
sive dogma that all men are born free and equal ; and that such a geographical party is a 
well-adapted means to that end — does this strike you as altogether in the spirit of Wash- 
ington and Franklin, and the preamble to the Constitution, and the Farewell Address ? 
Does it strike you that if carried out it will prove to be a mere summer excursion to Mos- 
cow ? Will there be no bivouac in the snow, no avenging winter hanging on retreat ; no 
Lcipsic, no Waterloo ? " 

Has the avenging winter indeed come ! God in his mercy forbid ! 

That crusade failed in 185G. What a risk we ran then ! It suc- 
ceeded in 1860. What a peril is now upon us ! What a crusade it Avas 
which has produced it ! I well remember that my own Republican com- 
petitor for this seat was quoted in Blackwood's Magazine, with Tory 
delight, over the anti-slavery revolution which he preached in this House 
in 1856, and which he would have ushered in with Bunker Hills, and 
other battle-fields of freedom. 

But admitting the source of this great peril to lie in Republican as- 



198 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

cendeucy, still, I ask, is it remediless in the Union? Admitting all you 
claim of danger to your States from this sectional triumph ; admitting that 
you are right in concerting for your own protection — yet is it right, fair, 
or just to rush forward, regardless alike of friends and foes, to a chasm 
where no guarantee can be asked or offered ? Give us one more chance 
to appeal to the returning reason of the North, now that it is startled by 
the fulfilment of these prophecies and warnings. If you do not, what then ? 
You will give to your enemies the advantage which belongs to you and to 
us. They are already eager to seize the legislative as well as the execu- 
tive departments. They talk of reforming the Supreme Court for their 
purposes. They who have taught and practised the breaches of civil dis- 
cipline, are becoming the conservators of public order. On yom- retiring, 
they will filch from its old guard the ensign of the Constitution. Why, to 
break up this Government before a full hearing of the grievances, is to be 
worse even than Red Republicanism ! Shall it be said that our friends 
of the South are worse than the Red Communists of France ? So it would 
seem, and so I wiU proceed to prove. 

Apprehension of evil ! It was the argument of despotism in France in 
1851. Louis Napoleon used it for his bad purposes ; but the French Re- 
publicans denounced it. Let me draw the analogy. In article forty-five 
of the French Constitution, it was enacted : 

" Le President de la Republique est elu pour quatre ans, et n'est reeli^ble qu'aprfes un 
intervale de quatre annees." — Annuaire Historique, 1848, Appendice^ p. 43. 

In article one hundred and ten it was further enacted : 

"Lorsque, dans la dernifere annee d'une Legislature, I'Assemblee nationale aura emis le 
vceu que la Constitution soit modifiee en tout ou en partle, il sera precede h, cette revision 
de la maniere suivante. 

"Le voeu exprime par I'Assemblee ne sera converti eu resolution definitive qu'aprfes 
trois deliberations successives, prises chacune 5, un mois d'intervale et au trois quarts des 
suffi'ages exprimes. 

" Le nombre des votants ne pourra etre moindre de cinq cents." 

Thus, in 1848, Louis Napoleon was elected President for four yeara, 
the constitutional term. He was, by the one hundred and tenth article, 
ineligible to a reelection except after an intei'val of four years. His term 
would have expired in May, 1852. The summer of 1851, in France, was 
signalized by vague apprehensions of a revolt, when the President should 
constitutionally go out. Under this apprehension the National Legisla- 
ture were summoned to change the Constitution. It required three ex- 
press ballots of the Assembly, taken at a month's interval, with three- 
fourths of the Assembly, and at least five hundred votes to be given, be- 
fore that Constitution could be so changed as to continue Napoleon in 
power. Hereupon arose a parliamentary struggle, unequalled in any 
forum. It was before the giant intellects of France were exiled by the 
perfidy of its ruler. Here was a country like France, with sixty years 
of political vicissitude, wherein every tradition and compact had been 
violated ; and yet even there, the Constitution of the new Republic Avas 
invested with such a sanctity, that it defied the majority of the Assembly 
to change it. The Lafayettes, the Hugos, the Lamartines, the African 
Generals, Lamorieitjre, Changarnier, Cavaignac, Bedeau, and Le Flo, 
struggled against this change, ^vith an eloquence radiant with French fer- 



SECESSION. 199 

vor, and inspired with the genius of great deeds. Their President had 
sworn to be " faithful to the Democratic Republic, one and indivisible, and 
to fulfil the duties imposed by the Constitution." At length a vote was 
taken. There were 446 for the amendment ; only 278 against it ; a 
majority of 168 ; but not enough; not the required three-fourths ! The 
crafty President, finding he could not change the Constitution in the con- 
stitutional manner, began to ply the popular will for his purposes. The 
Conseils Generaux demanded, and two million people petitioned for the 
change. But the Republicans, moderate and red, stood their ground. 
Even Proudlion, blood-red Communist, from his prison of St. Pelagic, 
wrote to Girardin that universal suffrage would not be price enough for 
such a breach of the Constitution. The great question was referred to a 
committee, of which De Tocqueville was chairman. He, too, withstood 
the pressure of power. The will of the minority, for whose protection 
constitutions are made, became, through the constituted mode of amend- 
ment, the will of the majority ; nay, of the State. Just as nine States in 
this Union hold om* Constitution in statu quo, against the will of the re- 
mainder. These loyal Frenchmen appealed to the nation, against the ad- 
herents of the Bourbon, Orleans, and Bonaparte. " No," they said, " we 
will not give up the repose of France, at the price of quieting apprehen- 
sion of future revolt." They thus confined the enemies of the Republic to 
the cu-cle of the Constitution, from which they could not break without 
crime. They declared that the prolongation of the term of Napoleon was 
a crime, impious and parricidal. When it was said that Napoleon would 
override the Constitution with force in 1852, if not before, they answered ; 
"■ Such a crisis will be revolution, arising from a violation of the funda- 
mental compact. In that case we declare that, enveloped in the flag of 
France, we will do the duty which the salvation of the Republic imposes ! " 
On the other hand, it was urged, as it is here urged, that if the Constitu- 
tion was not broken, there would be dangers more fatal. By a fore- 
knowledge of disaster, it was urged that the end of Napoleon's term must 
be a convulsion, which the Assembly, acting on an appi-ehension, ought 
to bind in advance. To save him from perjury, a majority of the Assem- 
bly were wilHng to commit it themselves. So now, according to my 
theory. South Carolina would break the Constitution and her oath of feal- 
ty, in apprehension of an aggression which the President elect, even if he 
would, has no power to commit. 

The summer of 1851 passed in France. Again and again had the 
minority of the Assembly rescued the Constitution from civil dethrone- 
ment. They triumphed in the forum of reason. But stay ! In a night — 
in the midst of the debates of the Assembly — on that fatal December 
night, the usurper seized the reins of power, and like a thief, by a noctur- 
nal surprise, he silenced every voice but his own, muzzled the press, struck 
down the Assembly, transported its leaders without judgment, made his 
Senate of mock Dukes, and surrounded himself with the bastards of his 
race. He illustrated the glory of a reign based on nullification, force, 
perjury, and fraud ! And is this the banquet to which the American 
people is in\-ited, by those among us who hate Red Republicans even 
worse than Black ? Let the American freeman from this example remem- 
ber this lesson : If political compacts like our Constitution be broken, 



200 EIGHT YEARS IN C0NGEES8, 

the limits of authority are effaced. Right succumbs to force. It signifies 
little whether such acts are done by Executive usurpation, military com- 
pression, Congressional action, or State secession ; the Government is 
gone ! States which will not keep inviolate the fixed principles of consti- 
tutional right, repudiate their own strength, assassinate their own life, 
tarnish their own glory, and will receive and deserve the iU-starred fate of 
France ! In whatever form these infractions may come, history has but 
one answer for their effect. When law is defied successfully, division will 
come armed with tenfold terror. Force Avill be arrayed against force. 
The brute rules and reason dies. If not resisted, there is but one alterna- 
tive : yokes of wood instead of cords of silk, and yokes of iron instead of 
yokes of wood. The red spectre of revolution, or the gentler movements 
of acquiescent infraction of the organic law. There is but one step from 
the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock. After centuries of brave struggle, thus 
France lost the Republic. What shall we say of America, Avith her seven- 
ty years crowded with the trophies of her success and greatness ? Read 
the prophetic warning of Judge Story (vol. ii., p. 138, of his Life and Let> 
ters) in his introduction to his Commentaries on the Constitution : 

"Tlie influence of the disturbing causes which, more than once in the Convention, were 
on the point of breaking up the Union, have since immeasurably increased in concentra- 
tion and vigor. The very inequaUties of a Government, confessedly founded on a com- 
promise, were then felt with a strong sensibility ; and every new source of discontent, 
whether accidental or permanent, has since added increased activity to the painful sense 
of these inequahties. The North cannot but perceive that it has yielded to the South a 
superiority of representatives, already amounting to twenty-tive, beyond its duo proportion ; 
and the South imagines that, with all this preponderance in representation, the other parts 
of the Union enjoy a more perfect protection of their interests than her own. The West 
feels her growing power and weight in the Union, and the Atlantic States begin to learn 
that the sceptre mu^t one day depart from them. If, under these circumstances, the Union 
should once be broken up, it is impossible that a new Constitution should ever be formed 
embracing the whole territory. We shall be divided into several nations or confederacies, 
rivals in power and interest, too proud to brook injury, and too close to make retaliation 
distant or ineffectual. Our very animosities will, like those of all other kindred nations, 
become more deadly, because our lineage, laws, and language are the same. Let the his- 
tory of the Grecian and Italian republics warn us of our dangers. The national Consti- 
tution is our last and our only security. United we stand, divided we fall." 

Ah ! it is easier to commit than to justify such a parricide ! But to 
justify it on an apprehension, is neither courageous nor safe. Let 
South Carolina beware! Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, on the 17th 
January, 1788, in the South Carolina Convention, on the adoption of 
the Federal Constitution, said : " We are so weak that, by ourselves, 
we could not form a union strong enough for the purpose of eflfectually 
protecting each other. Witliout union with the other States, South Car- 
olina must soon fall. Is there any one among us so much of a Quixote 
as to suppose that this State could long maintain her independence if she 
stood alone, or was only connected with the other southern States ? " {^El- 
liott's State Convention Debates^ vol. iv., p. 275.) The same statesman, on 
page 290, in paying a compliment to the Declaration of Independence, 
says : " Tiie separate independence and individual sovereignty of the 
several States were never thought of by the enlightened band of patriots 
who framed this declaration. The several States are not even mentioned 
by name in any part of it, as if it was intended to impress the maxim on 



SECESSION, 201 

America, that our freedom and independence arose from our Union, and 
that, without it, we could neither be free nor independent. Let us then 
consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each 
State is separately and individually independent, as a species of political 
heresy which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious 
distresses." God is just and history inexorable. In leaving the ensign of 
the stars and stripes. South Carolina will find no repose beneath her little 
palm. It is from Augustus to Augustulus. Her only renown and strength 
are in the clustered States — the Bundestaat, as the Germans term it — not 
in selfish, unfraternal, and hostile loneliness. When she rends the bonds 
of the Constitution, she opens her peace to the chances of that dark fu- 
tm'e, so vividly anticipated by the gentleman from Arkansas. 

I do not now say that I would vote means and money to repress her 
revolution. But am I not bovmd by my oath to support the Constitution of 
the United and not of the dis-United States ? If I do not do my part to 
carry on this Government, and to enforce its laws, have I any business 
here? Neither can I withhold my respect fi'om magistrates because 
they are not my choice. Private opinions must give place to public au- 
thority. The election of Abraham Lincoln, under the forms of the Con- 
stitution, however deplorable, cannot be questioned with argument or 
arms. Judge Douglas exhausted the argument in his reply to the Nor- 
folk questions ; and I have no such poor opinion of any portion of our 
people as to believe that they will question it with arms. South Carolina 
herself participated in this election, giving her voice for her favorite. 
When, therefore, she would ignore this election, and break the established 
order for this and other unjustifiable causes, she runs a fearful risk. Her 
destiny becomes a raffle. The insurrection of her slaves will then only 
become a question of opportunity. The slave trade will not help, only 
hasten and aggravate her ills. Perhaps, in the eye of Providence, it was 
her wisest act, when she yielded her assent to that Federal covenant, 
which was and is a restraint against herself and her slaves and for herself 
and her safety. That assent and that covenant were the highest expres- 
sion of the popular wiU ; for they were the voice of the majority, which 
Jefferson called the vital principle of Republics, and from which there is 
no appeal but to force — the vital principle and immediate parent of des- 
potism. 

Before risking such chances, cannot the South await the returning 
justice of the North ? Unless disunion be determined upon in spite of 
every effort at harmony, I do not see why, after having so long acqui- 
esced in the breach of the fourth article of the Constitution, any State 
shoidd go out upon that ground, even though, as Mr. Webster held, its 
breach, be treason. And as for the North, so long as the Federal laws 
remain unbroken, and no sei'ious detriment to the public property and 
peace is threatened, cannot she, too, tolerate these heated appeals, rebel- 
lious ordinances, and too careless handling of gunpowder at Point Morris, 
with equanimity, for the chance only of the rehabilitation of the seceding 
States? At least, until the North repeal their nullification laws, Avould 
not such equanimity be magnanimity? Let the South desist from further 
attempts to obstruct the collection of the Federal revenues and despoil the 
property of the Government ; let there be no attempt to exclude the people 



202 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

North and West from this Federal District and Capitol, and no attempt 
to sluvc us who are inland from the Gulf or sea ; and then what occasion 
is there likely to arise in which the North will dare take up arms to 
shoot or bayonet southern citizens into the Union, which they only leave, 
we may hope, constructively? 

If, as Mr. Douglas argued, war is disunion, cannot Ave, who love it so 
well, aftbrd to be patient for the Union ? But what a danger is here ! 
Once let the fealty to this Government be broken, and avIio can restrain the 
excesses incident thereto? If such excesses be committed, there would be 
aroused a martial spirit which, in rushing to the defence of Major An- 
derson and his men in Fort Sumter, or to avenge their death, would do 
and dare all in the name of our Great Republic. Touch not a hair of his 
head ! He is sacred to-day. He embodies the patriotism of millions. 
Accident has made him the defender of that tlag which has floated from 
Bunker Hill to Mexico. His death would open a gulf into which the people 
would pour, in vengeance even if in vain, their treasures and their chil- 
dren. 

Or if a confederation South propose to control the mouths of the IMis- 
sissippi and its banks, do you believe it could be done without a protest of 
arms ? Do you know the history of that acquisition, and its vital neces- 
sity to the Northwest? I hope you have listened to the able recital of 
my friend from Illinois [Mr. McClernand] touching these points. It 
would seem, from the news we have to-day, that a system of espionage 
and detention by force has already been begun in Mississippi, upon steam- 
ers from the North. That mighty river, of two thousand miles extent, 
one of whose tributaries doubles the parent stream in its length, ivith its 
$60,000,000 worth of steamers, doing the business of twelve States, with 
an area of one million two hundred thousand square miles drained by its 
waters — from the snows and timbers of the North, to the sun and blooms 
of the South — will ever remain in the Union ! It was the necessity for 
its use and outlet which, in part, called for the Constitution seventy-five 
years ago. As the veteran General Cass told me, the sparse population 
in my own State, of which he was one, were even then ready to rise in 
arms, in consequence of a provisional treaty with Spain, which did not 
adequately provide for the coveted riparian privileges. And now, after a 
usufruct of three quarters of a century, not only the commerce, the honor, 
and the rights of the West, but the protesting voices of nature, calling 
from valley and hill, in summer rains, in gold-washing streams and smiling 
cultivation ; nay, progress itself, which is the life of the West — which 
has made it deserve the poet's phrase, applied to ancient Latium, potens 
armis atque uhere gleboe — progress, which is the stride of a god across 
the continent — all these agencies would conspire to redden the Mississippi 
to float our unequalled produce between its banks to the sea ! It is in- 
dustry which would thus decree ; and it would execute its own edict. 
With us, not gold, nor cotton, but industry is king ! However homely 
its attire, it wears the purple, and on its brow the coronal of bearded 
grain, impearled with the priceless sweat of independence. It will stretch 
its sceptre from the river unto the ends of tlie earth ! Neither imposts, 
nor tariffs, nor obstructions, nor foreign control, nor hazard of foreign 
war, shall hedge in its empire. These rights of transit and outlet are ours 



SECESSION". 203 

by use, by purchase, by possession ; and ours they will remain. Leaving 
these elements of strife unstirred, the secession movement may vanish 
into a foolish dream — a spectre of the night, which will depart when the 
dawn shall again environ us in the cycle of its felicities ! 

But, as to these vague apprehensions of aggressions from the Presi- 
dent elect. Would it not*be best to await his entrance into power? 
What overt act has he yet done, or his party, in a Federal way ? If you 
resist now, it should be against the States Avhose legislation is hostile ; not 
against the General Government, which has done you no wrong. When 
that overt act is done which you fear, you will find the northern Democ- 
racy ready to join you in the defence of your rights and the vindication 
of your equality of privilege. Will southern statesmen look a few facts 
in the face, not with that dumb gaze which deadens the will and paralyzes 
the intellect, but with that large roundabout common sense which distin- 
guished her early statesmen? Is not Mr. Lincoln powerless for harm? 
Elected by about two million out of five million votes, he is in a minority 
of a million. That minority diminishes with every hour of northern 
misery, want, and bankruptcy. In that million there are antagonizing 
elements, without power morally or politically. More than half of that 
million will show a feeling of fraternity, which no partisanship can over- 
whelm. They will unite with that gallant band of Democrats and Ameri- 
cans in the North, who have ever warned and worked against the im- 
pending catastrophe. They will stand in the next Senate and House as a 
bulwark against the further advances of sectionalism. In my own State 
there are two hundred thousand patriots already as a nucleus for this 
great party of Union and justice. These men, sir, will welcome any honor- 
able settlement. For myself, I have a preference. I would prefer Judge 
Douglas's propositions even to the border State projet. But I will vote 
for either, for they answer every i*easonable demand with respect to the 
fugitive slave law, slavery in this District, and on other points. In refer- 
ence to the Territories, the border projet provides : 

" That the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes shall be run through all the existing 
territory of the United States ; that in all north of that line slavery shall be prohibited, 
and that, south of that line, neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature shall hereafter 
pass any law abolishing, prohibiting, or in any manner interfering with African slavery, 
and that, when any Territory containing a sufficient population for one member of Congress 
in any area of sixty thousand square miles, shall apply for admission as a State, it shall be 
admitted, with or without slavery, as its Constitution may determine." 

But, if this will not answer, let the proposition of Mr. Douglas or 
Mr. Rice be adopted. Nay, further, if it be the only alternative to pre- 
serve this Union, I would vote for the proposition of Mr. Crittenden. 
Much as I dislike, in this age of progress, an irrevocable law, still I 
would write it in the Constitution, if thus only you can preserve that in- 
strument. It provides for an irrevocable division of the territory. The 
President says of it : 

"The proposition to compromise, by letting the North have exclusive control of the 
territory above a certain line, and giving southern institutions protection below that line, 
ought to receive universal approbation. In itself, indeed, it may not be entirely satisfac- 
tory ; but when the alternative is between a reasonable concession on both sides, and the 
destruction of the Union, it is an imputation on the patriotism of Congress to assert that 
its members will hesitate for a moment." 



204 EIGHT YEAK8 IN CONGRESS. 

Shall this appeal for compromise be ineffectual ? It may be a sacri- 
fice of northern sentiment. But, sir, the conservative men will sacrifice 
much for the Union. Sacrifice and compromise are convertible terms. 
They are words of honorable import. The one gave us Calvary, the 
other the Constitution. Nothing worth having was ever gained without 
them. Even the father compromised with the prodigal son, despite the 
meanness of the elder brother. He saw him afar off, ran to him, and 
with the evidences of affection, restored him to his heirship and honor. 
Sacrifice for our political salvation ! Heaven will smile upon it. The 
dove of peace will rest upon it. If the Republicans will only bestow on 
us a few of their conservative votes in this House, we will do our part to 
make compromise honorable. If you dislike the word compromise, and 
are content with the offices and power it will insure you, very well. You 
may bear away the booty, we will carry the banner ! We will not quar- 
rel, nor need we taunt each other. You ijaay enjoy the honors and pat- 
ronage of administration ; to us will belong tlie laurelled crown of the 
Revolution, and the civic wreath of the great Convention ! 

Our southerQ friends do not know the Republicans as we do. They 
will be content with the tricks, and I trust allow us the honors. They 
will be as harmless in office as most men are. When Gen. Wilson talks 
of grinding the slave power to powder, he never intends to use the pow- 
der, only to enjoy the power. [Laughter.] When the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Lovejoy] would speak to the God of battles, he is only 
praying to an unknown God. [Renewed laughter.] When Senator Wade, 
at Belfast, Maine, four years ago, proclaimed that there was no Union, 
that the pretended Union was meretricious ; and when he proposed to 
drive " slavery back to her own dark dominions, and there to let her rot, 
and damn all who foster her," he was only illustrating that Christian 
sweetness of temper and fragrance of sentiment which is now offered up 
as incense on the only altar he knows — that of a meretricious Union, 
"whose shew-bread he would eat and whose precious emblems he would 
plunder ! The John Brown and Helper characteristics are convenient 
garments among them, to be put on to proselyte the churches and the old 
women, and to be put off to please wide-awakes and old Whigs. They 
do this for office. They do not think of its effect upon the South. It is 
a trick to be ignored when in office. These defiant men at home will be- 
come sucking doves in power. It is not instinct to fight over provender. 
If the South could understand them, and not take them at their word too 
rashly. 

It is said that the reason why the South opposes the rule of Republi- 
canism is, tliat their tenets are misrepresented at the South. I will not 
now show you what the Republicans profess at home. I hope they 
will fully disavow, under the composing sweets of fat jobs and offices, 
their bad acts and worse avowals when out of office. And is there not 
reason for hope? Patience ! already they are willing to forego their Con- 
gressional provisos against slavery. They have already proposed to drop 
intervention by Congress. They are willing to accept New Mexico as a 
slave State. Courage, gentlemen ! I do not taunt, I applaud, this spirit 
of conciliation. The Republican party would enjoy its power. In this 
it is not peculiar, perhaps. It is a way men and parties have. It will 



SECESSION. 205 

remember that to retain power — in the matter of personal liberty bills, 
non-delivery of criminals, judicial decisions, and other aggressions on the 
Constitution — these wrongs cannot stand. It is as revolutionary to try to 
keep such things as they are, as it is to upset the Government because of 
them. There is nothing so convulsive or unnatural as tlie strain to keep 
wrong in tlie ascendant. Mr. Lincoln in the White House may not be 
the rail-splitter out of ^t. Abraham, in faith, may offer up his " irrepres- 
sible " offspring. [Laughter.] He will be conservative, with a total ob- 
livion of the radical. The one will "conflict" with the other; and the 
former wiil become all one thing, without the other. He may disappoint 
the South as much as the abolition wing of his party. In their abolition 
platforms, it would seem as if the Eepublicans would hold this Union 
together by the running noose of Jolm Brown gibbets ; but when they ap- 
proach the august presence of power, and undertake to rule thirty-one 
millions of people, as already demonstrated here, they hold up the fasces of 
the Republic and wonder why we ever misunderstood or misrepresented 
their innocency ! 

Their success is the result of passionate appeals. Passion soon sub- 
'sides. This is the old and avowed means of the anti-slavery party. It 
began in England, as you will see by the London " Times " of November 3, 
1832, Aviien hired orators went over Britain, under pay of an anti-slavery 
propagandism. It was then said that George Thompson, who was sent 
to this country as its apostle, was " the very lecturer we want, because 
his lectures are addi*essed to the passions. We are so satisfied of the 
goodness of our cause, that we do not want to consult the reason or judg- 
ment of the people. If they vote for us, we do not care whether their 
votes come through their passions or not." This brute appeal to the pas- 
sions succeeded in England, as her ruined West Indies testify ; for phi- 
lanthropy there is great in proportion to its distance from its object. But 
here the sense of a brotherly people will reprehend such appeals. They see 
the African here in his relation of servitude. They know what he be- 
comes in the North when free. They know that it is impossible to man 
umit him speedily, without injury irreparable to white and black. They 
will not sacrifice this Government of twenty-seven and a half million 
whites to do no good to three and a half million blacks. Even many of 
those who oppose slavery, find in it the relation which the eagle and the 
lamb sustained in the air. It might have been wrong for the eagle to 
have seized the lamb. The eagle, while holding it, may return to a con- 
sciousness of the wrong he is doing ; but it does not follow that he should 
let it drop from his talons to the earth. It seems impossible for any one 
to view the philosophy of Republican principles, and not revolt in sober 
reason from its inevitable and suicidal results. There is hope that it wiU 
be as timid in power as it is destructive in principle. Heaven wUl smile 
on such timidity. Nay, it will cease to be such, if prompted by an honest 
desire to establish justice by the retraction of wrong. It wiU become 
moral courage. 

When Mr. Giddings writes to Mr. Ewing, that none but cowards, 
none but unvirile minions of the slave power, like himself, are afraid of 
dissolution, he begins to show the impotence of rage at a fracture ah-eady 
begun in the party which he originated. The Republican party, it is to 



206 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGKESS. 

be hoped, under the lead of Bates, Raymond, Corwin, Ewing, Weed, ay, 
and Seward and Lincoln also, wiU drown the Giddings crew, even if they 
have to scuttle their own party ship, and go down with it. Time, patience, 
fidelity to your old and tried friends, gentlemen of the South, and all will 
be well ! Let us exhaust every effort at an accommodation. There is 
wisdom in the letter of George Washington, of July 27, 1798, accepting 
the command in chief, in the threatened war against the French Directory. 
Said he : 

" Satisfied that you have sincerely endeavored to avert war, and exhausted to the last 
drop the cup of reconciliation, we can, with pure hearts, appeal to Heaven for the justice 
of our cause." 

When you hav.e drained the cup of reconciliation dry and have not 
justice, you will find a majority of northern men ready to fight your battle 
on our ground. , Never, never will the Democrats of Ohio, so long as 
their Republican governors, legislatures, and judges do not retrace their 
steps and do justice to the Constitution which they have annulled ; never 
will these Democrats, the best, I will not say the only fighting element of 
Ohio, thrust Republican wi'ongs down the throats of the South at the 
point of the bayonet ! Am I answered that no such wrongs exist ? If 
there be an Ohio Republican on this floor who so answers, I thi'ovv down 
the glove and will lift the veil from the spotted leprosy of our Republican 
rule. I Avill not sit here in silent acquiescence of the disgraceful conduct 
of my own State. I have no State pride in the action of our legislative, 
judicial, and executive officers. Let the supporters of ^rinkerhoff, Sutliff, 
Denison, and their companions, take up the glove ! If they would call 
South Carolina to account, let them first remove the beam from their own 
eye. They never can, while spotted with moral treason and guilty of de- 
liberate nullification, make Ohio Democrats the tools of their vengeance — 
never, never ! When they denounce the mad precipitancy of the South, 
let them remove its cause ! I know and ponder what I say. You will 
have justice if you will have patience and permit reconciliation. 

Whatever the legal powers of the Federal Goverment may be, they 
derive all theii' efficiency from the popular will. The Constitution gives 
the Government force to execute the law ; but it is a force, after all, 
which resides in the people, and which they will withhold in an unjust 
cause. We have no Army to execute the edict of Republican injustice. 
Our bayonets think. We have in the West, beneath a sheathen rough- 
ness, a keen sabre ready to flash in defence of the Union to which our 
people owe so much, and which is the best beloved of their heart. And 
if no time be left for conciliation ; if you of the South desert your friends 
and the Union to their fate ; if you leave to be decided but the one great 
overmastering problem. Union or disunion ; if in the presence of this hard 
sohtary question, they are left to decide it, and peril come from their de- 
cision, which conservative men cannot avert, there will ring out from the 
yearning patriotic heart of the mighty West, it may be in agony and de- 
spair : the Union, now and forever, one and indivisible — it must and shall 
be preserved ! 

I warn the Republican party that they wiU need the aid of the patriotic 
men of the North to sustain their Executive. This revolution is reserv- 
ing its more effectual overt acts for Republican rule. What then ? It 



SECESSION. 207 

will have become strong by cooperation. No Republican Administration 
can enforce the law, unless the Republican State authorities first place 
themselves right before the people, and reconstruct the moral bases of their 
Governments. By the 4th of March, South Carolina will have the Gulf 
States united. It will appeal to that economic law which is stronger 
than sentiment. By its appeal to the interests of the cotton States it will 
succeed in securing cooperation. Before we enter upon a career of force, 
let us exhaust every efibrt at peace. Let us seek to excite love in others 
by the signs of love in ourselves. Let there be no needless provocation 
and strife. Let every reasonable attempt at compromise be considered. 
' Otherwise we have a terrible alternative. War, in this age and in this 
country, sir, should be the ultima ratio. Indeed, it may well be ques- 
tioned whether there is any reason in it or for it. What a war ! Endless 
in its hate, without truce and without mercy. If it ended ever, it would 
only be after a fearful struggle ; and then with a heritage of hate which 
would forever forbid harmony. Henry Clay forewarned us of such a war. 
His picture of its consequences I recall in his oaati language : 

"I will not attempt to describe scenes which now happily lie concealed from our view. 
Abolitionists themselves would shrink back in dismay and horror at the contemplation of 
desolated fields, conflagrated cities, murdered inhabitants, and the overthrow of the fairest 
fabric of human government that ever rose to animate the hopes of civilized man. Nor 
should the Abolitionists flatter themselves that, if they can succeed in their object of uniting 
the people of the free States, they will enter the contest with a numerical superiority that 
must insure victory. All history and experience proves the hazard and uncertainty of 
war. And we are admonished by Holy Writ that the race is not to the swift, nor the bat- 
tle to the strong. 

"But if they were to conquer, whom would they conquer? A foreign foe — one who 
had insulted our flag, invaded our shores, and laid our country waste ? No, sir ; no. It 
would be a conquest without laurels, without glory — a self, a suicidal conquest — a con- 
quest of brothers over brothers, achieved by one over another portion of the descendants 
of cogimon ancestors, who, nobly pledging their lives, their fortune, and their sacred 
honor, had fought and bled, side by side, in many a hard battle on land and ocean, 
severed our country from the British crown, and established our national independence." 

Such a war is the almost unavoidable result of a dissolution of this 
Confederacy. Mr. Madison (No. 61," Federalist") urged as a reason for the 
Union, that it destroyed every pretext for a military establishment ; " but 
its dissolution," said he, " will be the date of a new order of things. Fear 
and ambition would make America copy Europe, and present liberty 
everywhere crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes." He 
augui-ed for a disunited America a worse condition than that of Europe. 
Would it not be so ? Small States and great States ; new States and old 
States ; slave States and free States ; Atlantic States and Pacific States ; 
gold and silver States ; iron and copper States ; grain States and lumber 
States ; river States and lake States ; all having varied interests and 
advantages, would seek superiority in armed strength. Pride, aniiaiosity, 
and glory would inspire e%"ery movement. God shield our country from 
such a fulfilment of the prophecy of the revered founders of the Union. 
Our struggle would be no short, sharp struggle. Law, and even Religion 
herself, would become false to their divine purpose. Their voice would 
no longer be the voice of God, but of his enemy. Poverty, ignorance, 
oppression, and its handmaid, cowardice, breaking out into merciless 
cruelty ; slaves false ; freemen slaves, and society itself poisoned at the 



208 EIGHT YEAES EST CONGEESS. 

cradle and dishonored at tlie grave — its life, now so full of blessings, 
would be gone with the life of a fraternal and united State-hood. What 
sacrifice is too great to prevent such a calamity ? Is such a picture over- 
drawn? ^h-eady its outlines appear. "What means the inaugural of 
Governor Pickens, when he says, " From the position we may occupy 
toward the northern States, as well as from our own internal structure 
of society, the government may, /rom necessity^ hecome strongly military in 
its organization " ? What means the minute-men of Governor Wise ? 
What the southern boast that they have a rifle or shot-gun to each family? 
What means the Pittsburg mob ? What this alacrity to save Forts Moul- 
trie and Pinckney ? What means the boast of the southern men of being 
the best-armed people in the woi'ld, not counting the two hundred thou- 
sand stand of United States arms stored in southern arsenals? Already 
Geoi'gia has her arsenals, with eighty thousand muskets ! What mean 
these lavish grants of money by southern Legislatures to buy more arms ? 
What mean these rumors of arms and force on the Mississippi ? These 
few facts have ah'eady verified the prophecy of Madison. 

Mr. Speaker, he alone is just to his country ; he alone has a mind 
unwarjjed by section, and a memory unparalyzed by fear, who warns 
against precipitancy. He who could hurry this nation to the rash wager 
of battle, is not fit to hold the seat of legislation. What can justify the 
breaking up of our institutions into belligerent fractions? Better this 
marble Capitol were levelled to the dust ; better were this Congress struck 
dead in its deliberations ; better an immolation of every ambition and 
passion which have here met to shake the foundations of society, than the 
hazard of these consequences ! 

As yet, I do not believe that the defensive conduct of the Executive in- 
volves these consequences. Nay, I hope that firmness in resisting aggres- 
sion, with the kindness which he has endeavored to show, may do much to 
avert them. Certainly weakness and indecision now will not avail to 
check the rising tide of public sentiment, and preserve the public peace. 
I agree with much that my friends from Illinois [Mr. McClernand], 
New York [Mr. Sickles], and Ohio [Mr. Vallandigham] have said 
as to the interests, dignity, and rights of their own sections. I will not now 
go into any calculation or contemplation about the results of a disseverance 
of this Union. Long may it be averted — that picture of Ohio, as the 
narrow isthmus between a broken East and a divided West, with a hostile 
southern border ! Long may it be averted — that sad picture of New 
York, a great free emporium, trading to all the world, and closed against 
the interchange of her own inland ! We have gloom enough without these 
new schemes of divisiou. I invoke the better spirit of Washington, who 
never spoke so truly prophetic as a statesman as when he said : 

" In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as a matter of 
serious concern, that any ground sliould have been furnished for characterizing parties by 
geographical discriminations, northern and southern, Atlantic and Western, whence de- 
signing men may endeavor to incite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests 
and views. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burn- 
ings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render aUen to each other 
those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection." 

In these days of anticipated trouble, when financial disaster tracks the 



SECESSION. 209 

step of political infidelity ; when the violation of compact is followed close 
by the intemperate zealotry of revolution ; when even the property of our 
Union is seized, and our flag is torn down under its impulses ; when, as 
if premonitory of some great sacrifice, the veil of our political temple 
seems rent, and the earth about us quakes, and the very graves give up 
their dead, who come forth to warn, beseech, advise, and moderate, in 
this hour of our country's deepest gloom and peril — let us heed, with an 
all-embracing and all-compromising patriotism, the warning of Washing- 
ton, whose voice, though he be dead, yet speaketh from yonder tomb at 
Mount Vernon, and whose august presence I would summon here as the 
Preserver of that country whose gi-eatest pride it is, to hail him as its 
Father ! 

In his sacred name, and on behalf of a people who have ever heeded 
his warning, and never wavered in the just defence of the South or of 
the North, I appeal to southern men Avho contemplate a step so fraught 
with hazard and strife, to pause. Clouds are about us ! There is light- 
ning in their frown ! Cannot we direct it harmlessly to the earth ? The 
morning and evening prayer of the people I speak for in such weakness, 
rises in strength to that Supreme Ruler who, in noticing the fall of a spar- 
row, cannot disregard the fall of a nation, that our States may continue 
to be — as they have been — one ; one in the unreserve of a mingled na- 
tional being ; one as the thought of God is One ! 

[Here Mr. Cox's hour expked ; but, by unanimous consent of the 
House, he was allowed to go on and conclude his remarks.] 

These emblems above us, in their canopy of beauty, each displaying 
the symbol of State interest, State pride, and State sovereignty, let not 
one of them be dimmed by the rude breath of passion, or effaced by the 
ruder stroke of enmity. They all shine, like stars, differing in glory, in 
their many-hued splendors, by the light of the same orb, even as our 
States receive their lustre from the Union, which irradiates and glorifies 
each and all. 

Our aspirations and hopes centre in the proud title of American citi- 
zen. Whether we hail from the land of gi-anite or the everglade of flow- 
ers ; from the teeming bosom of the West, the sea-washed shore of the 
East, or the gold-bearing sierras of the Pacific slope — all are imbound by 
the same rigol of American patriotism. Abroad, at home, in palace or 
in cabin, in ship or on land, we rejoice in that proud distinction of 
American citizen. We look upon our nationality as the actual of that 
ideal described by Edmund Burke in a strain of finished eloquence and 
sublimest philosophy — as something better than a partnership in trade, 
to be taken up for a temporary interest and dissolved at the fancy of the 
parties. We look upon it with other reverence, because it is not a part- 
nership in things subservient only to a gross animal existence of a perish- 
able nature. It is a partnei-ship in all science ; a partnership in all art ; 
a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends 0f such 
a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a part- 
nership not only between those who are living, but between those who are 
living, those who are dead, and those who ai-e to be born. Each contract 
of each State is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal 
SOCIETY, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible 
14 



210 



EIGHT TEAKS EST CONGRESS. 



with the invisible world, according to a fixed compact, sanctioned by the 
inviolable oath which holds all physical, all moral natures each in their 
appointed place. Tims regarding our nationality as more than a life, 
as the association of many lives in one, as an immortality rather than a 
life, the people of this country will cling to it with a tenacity of purpose 
and an energy of will as to the very cross of their temporal salvation, and 
revere it as the impersonation of their sovereign upon earth, whose throne 
is this goodly land, and whose mighty minstrelsy, ever playing before it, 
is the voice of an intelligent, happy, and free people ! 



Y. 

EULOGY OF STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

Delivered in the House of Bepresentatives on the 9th of July^ 1861. 

Mr. Speaker : Ohio is not separated from Kentucky, either in the 
estimate of Judge Douglas, Avhich has been so eloquently pronounced by 
the distinguished statesman [Mr. Crittenden] who has just taken his 
seat, or in the grief which has been expressed for the premature closing 
of his illustriovTS career. That career closed with the opening of this 
eventful summer. It abounded in friendships, services, and ambitions. 
It ended while he was enjoying the tumult of universal acclaim, and 
when all felt the need of its continuance. Labor paused in its toil, 
bankers shut their offices and merchants their stoi'es, lawyers and judges 
adjourned their courts, ministers added new fervor to prayer, partisans 
united in hushed regret, and soldiers draped the flag in crape, to bear 
their part in the great grief of the nation. He died in the midst of the 
people who had honored him for a generation ; in the city whose growth 
had been fostered by his vigilance ; in the State whose prairies were famil- 
iar to his eye from earliest manhood ; and in that great Northwest, whose 
commercial, agricultural, physical, and imperial greatness was the pride 
of his heart and the type of his own character. There was in him a quick 
maturity of growth, a fertility of resource, and a sturdiness of energy, 
which made his life the microcosm of that great section with which he was 
so closely identified. That mind which had few equals, and that will 
which had no conqueror, save in the grave, were at last wrung from his 
iron frame. It is hard to believe that he lies pulseless in his sepulchre at 
Cottage Grove. It is sad to feel that the summer wind which waves the 
grass and flowers of his loved prairies has, in its low wail, an elegy to the 
departed statesman. Well might the waters of the lake, just before his 
death, as if premonitory of some great sacrifice, swell in mysterious emo- 
tion. These poor panegyrics, from manuscript and memory, fail to express 
the loss Avhich those feel who knew him best. One would wish for the 
eloquence of Bossuet, or the muse of Spenser or Tennyson, to tell in the 
poetry of sorrow the infinite woe which would wreak itself upon expression. 
For weeks the public have mourned him as a loss so grievous as to be 
irreparable in this trying time of the Republic. The lapse of time only 



212 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

adds to the weight of the bereavement. The tears which fell around his 
bedside and on his bier stUl 

" Weep a loss forever new." 

With every passing day we turn, but turn in vain, to catch his hopeful 
tone, his discriminating judgment, his philosophic foresight, and his 
courageous patriotism. They only come to us in memory and in mourn- 
ing. Plis lips are sealed ; his eye is dim ; his brain is shrouded ; his 
heart is still ; and the nation stands Avith throbbing heart at his grave. 
" His virtue is treasured in our hearts ; his death is our despair." It is 
no mere ceremonial, therefore, that the national Legislature, in whose 
counsels he has taken so prominent a part, should pause, even in extraor- 
dinary session, to bestow that homage which friendship, intellect, and 
patriotism ever offer to the true man, the gifted soul, and the enlight- 
ened statesman. 

Judge Douglas struggled into greatness. He had no avenue to honor 
except that which was open to all. The power and patronage which 
aided him, he created ; and the wealth which he made and spent so freely, 
came from no ancestral hand. Part teacher and part cabinet maker, he 
left the East for the ruder collisions of border life. There he grew up 
under the adversities which strengthened him into a vigorous and early 
maturity. His own manhood soon made itself felt. He became the po- 
litical necessity of his State. He filled many of its most important offices 
before he became nationally known. The Democratic people of the Union 
were soon attracted to him. As early as 1848 they began to think of 
him as their candidate for President ; while, in 1852, the Democratic 
Review hailed him as the coming man ; a man who had no grandfather 
or other incident of biographical puffery ; as one whose genealogical tree 
had been sawed up ; as a graduate from the university of the lathe ; as 
one with the materials, the mind, and the energy to shape, fashion, and 
make enduring, a platform of his own. 

No notice of Stephen A. Douglas is complete which does not remark 
upon the singular magnetism of his personal presence, the talismanic 
touch of his kindly hand, the gentle amenities of his domestic life, and the 
ineradicable clasp of his friendships. It may not be improper to refer to 
the fact that I was one among the many young men of the West who 
were bound to him by a tie of friendship and a spell of enthusiasm which 
death has no power to break. These are the pearls beneath the rough shell 
of his political life. There are many here who wiU understand me, when 
I recall the gentle tone and the cordial greeting with which he used to woo 
and win and hold the young partisans of his faith, and the warm promot- 
ers of his success. Ever I'eady with his counsel, his means, and his ener- 
gies, he led them as much by the persuasiveness of his heart as the logic 
of his head. The same gentle demeanor Avhich fondled his children and 
taught them a beauty of manners beyond all praise, the same pure respect 
and tenderness with which he treated his noble wife and companion, 
silvered the cords of attachment which bound his friends to him, and made 
his home at Wasliington and his sojourns elsewhere recollections as sweet 
as memory can embalm. 

While others bear testimony to his moral heroism, intellectual prowess, 






EULOGY OF STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 213 

fixedness of principle, and unstained patriotism, it seems that his spirit, 
if it hovers over this scene of his obsequies, would receive with purest 
delight these tributes of friendly affection. I recall in my OAvn experience, 
which runs with unbroken association of friendship with him from the 
first year of my political life, many of his acts of unselfish devotion ; many 
words outspoken to the public, which the mere designing pob'tician would 
not have uttered ; many tenders of aid and counsel, which were the more 
grateful because unsought, and the more serviceable because they came 
from him. It is one of the felicities of my life that I have been the recip- 
ient of his kindness and confidence ; and that the people whom I represent 
were cherished by him, as he was by them, with the steadfastness of unal- 
loyed devotion. 

It was his pleasure very often to sojourn in the capital city of Ohio, 
where, regardless of party, the people paid him the respect due to his 
character and services. Among the last of the associations which he had 
with Ohio was his address, a few weeks before his death, to the people at 
its capital, on the invitation of the State Legislature. His stirring tones 
still thrill on the air, protesting for the right and might of the Great West 
to egress through our rivers and highways to the sea against all hostile 
obstruction, and for the maintenance of the Government, threatened by 
the great I'evolution which yet surrounds us. His last utterance was the 
fit climax of a life devoted to the study of this Government, and of a 
patriotism which never swerved from its love for the Union. It was 
worth whole battalions of armed men. A word from him made calm 
from tempest, and resolved doubt into duty. His thought swayed the 
tides of public opinion as vassals to his will. After his hot contests iu 
the Senate, during the first session of the last Congress ; after his Harper 
essay in development of his political theories ; after his heroic campaign in 
the South, closing at Norfolk in his courageous reply to the questions of 
the disunionists ; after his struggles of last winter, when he strung his en- 
ergies to the utmost in pleading for peace and conciliation ; after all had 
failed, and secession stalked with haughty head through the land, and even 
jeoparded this metropolis of the nation, it was the consummate glory of 
his life to have given his most emphatic utterance for the maintenance of 
the Government, even though its administration was committed to his old 
political antagonist, and although he knew that such expressions imperil- 
led the lives of a hundred thousand of his friends. 

Scarcely with any of our public men can Douglas be compared. 
The people like to compare him to Jackson, for his energy and honesty. 
He was like the great triumvirate — Clay, Webster, and Calhoun — but 
" like in difierence." Like them in his gift of political foresiglit, still he 
had a power over the masses possessed by neither. Like Clay, in his 
charm to make and hold friends and to lead his pai*ty ; like Webster, in 
the massive substance of his thought, clothed in apt political words ; like 
Calhoun, in the tenacity of his purpose and the subtlety of his dialecl:ics ; 
he yet surpassed them all in the homely sense, the sturdy strength, and 
indomitable persistence with which he wielded the masses and electrified 
the Senate. 

In the onslaught of debate he was ever foremost ; his crest high and 
his falchion keen. Whether his antagonists numbered two or ten, whether 



214 EIGHT YEAES EST CONGEESS. 

the whole of the Senate were against him, he could " take a raking fire 
at the whole group." Like the shrouded Junius, he dared Commons, 
Lords, and King, to the encounter ; but unlike that terrible shadow, he 
sought no craven covert, but fought in the open lists, with a muscular and 
mental might which defied the unreasoning cries of the mob and rolled 
back the thunders of the Executive anathema ! 

Douglas was no scholar, in the pedantic sense of the term. His read- 
ing was neither classical nor varied. Neither was he a sciolist. His re- 
searches were ever in the line of his duty, but therein they were thorough. 
His library was never clear from dust. His favorite volume was the 
book of human nature, which he consulted without much regard to the 
binding. He was skilled in the contests of the bar ; but he was more 
than a la^vyer — he easily separated the rubbish of the law from its essence. 
As a jurist, his decisions were not essays ; they had in them something 
decisive, after the manner of the best English judges. As a legislator, 
his practicalness cut away the entanglements of theoretic learning and 
ancient precedent, and brought his mind into the presence of the thing to 
be done or undone. Hence he never criticized a wrong for Avhich he did 
not provide a remedy. He never discussed a question that he did not 
propose a measure. 

Plis style was of that plain and tough fibre which needed no ornament. 
He had a felicity in the use of political language never equalled by any 
public man. He had the right word for the right place. His inteiToga- 
tive method, and his ready and fit replies, gave dramatic vivacity to his 
debates. Hence the newspapers readily copied them, ^nd the people re- 
tentively remembered them. Gleams of humor were not infrequent in his 
speeches, as in his conversation. His logic had the reach of the rifled can- 
non, which annihilated while it silenced the batteries of his opponents. 

Douglas was a partisan ; but he never wore his party uniform when 
his country was in danger. His zeal, like all excess, may have had its 
defect ; but to him who observes the symmetry and magnanimity of his 
life, it will appear that he always strove to make his party conservative 
of his country. The tenacity with which he clung to his theory of terri- 
torial government, and the extension of suffi-age, on local questions, from 
State to Territory, and the absolute non-intervention by Congress for the 
sake of peace and union, Avhile it made him enemies, increased the admi- 
ration of . his friends. His nature shines out with its loftiest grace and 
courage in his debates on these themes, so nearly connected as he thought 
them with the stability of the Republic. 

If it be that every true man is himself a cause, a country, or an age ; 
if the height of a nation is the altitude of its best men, then, indeed, are these 
enlarged liberalities, which are now fixed as American institutions, but the 
lengthened shadow of Stephen A. Douglas. Tliis is the cause — self- 
government in State and Territory — with which he would love most to 
be identified in his country's history. He was ready to follow it to any 
logical conclusion, having faith in it as a principle of repose, justice, and 
union. Placed at the head of the Territorial Committee, it was his hand 
which, on this basis, fashioned Territory after Territory, and led State 
after State into the Union. The latest constellation, formed by California, 
Iowa, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and I may add Kansas, received 



EULOGY OF STEPHEN AENOLD DOUGLAS.* 215 

their charter to shiae and revolve under his hand. These States, faithful 
to his fostering, will ever remain as monuments of his greatness ! 

His comprehensive forecast was exhibited in his speech on the Clayton 
and Bulwer treaty, on the 4th of March, 1853 ; wherein he enforced a 
continental policy suitable and honorable to the New World and its des- 
tiny, now so unhappily obscured. That speech was regarded by Judge 
Douglas as among the most valuable, as I think it the most finished and 
cogent speech of his life. His philippic against England, which to-day 
has its vindication in her selfish conduct towards us, will remind the 
scholar of Demosthenes, while his enlarged philosophy has the sweep and 
dignity of Edmund Burke. It was this speech which gave to Douglas 
the heart of Young America. He refused to prescribe limits to the area 
over which Democratic principles might safely spread. " I know not 
what our destiny may be. But," he continued, '• I try to keep up with, 
the spirit of the age ; to keep in view the history of the country ; see what 
we have done, whither we are going, and with what velocity we are mov- 
ing, in order to be prepared for those events which it is not in the power 
of man to thwart." He would not then see the limits of this giant Repub- 
lic fettered by treaty ; neither would he in 1861 see them cmiailed by 
treachery. If he were alive to-day, he would repeat with new emphasis 
his Avarning against England and her unforgiving spite, wounded pride, 
and selfish policy. When, in 1847, he advocated the policy of terminating 
her joint occupation with us of Oregon, he was ready to back it by mili- 
tary force ; and if war should result, " we might di-ive Great Britain and 
the last vestiges of royal authority from the continent of North America, 
and make the United States an ocean-bound Kepublic ! " 

With ready tact and good sense he brought to the fiscal and com- 
mercial problems of the country views suitable to this age of free inter- 
change and scientific advancement. His position on the Foreign Affairs 
Committee of the Senate gave him a scope of view abroad, which was 
enriched by European travel and historic research, and w^hich he ever 
used for the advancement of our flag and honor among the nations. His 
knowledge of our domestic troubles, with their hidden rocks and horrid 
breakers, and the measures he proposed to remove them, show that he 
was a statesman of the highest rank, fit for calm or storm. 

Some have lamented his death now as untimely and unfortunate for 
his own fame, since it has happened just at the moment when the politician 
was lost in the patriot, and when. he had a chance to atone for past error 
by new devotion. Mr. Speaker, men do not change their natures so 
easily. The Douglas of 1861 was the Douglas of 1850, 1854, and 
1858. The patriot who denounced this great rebellion was the patriot in 
every fold and lineament of his character. There is not a page of his 
history that we can afford to blot. The words which escaped him in the 
delirium of his last days — when he heard the " battle afar off, the thunder 
of the captains, and the shouting " — were the key-note to a harmonious 
life. Observant of the insidious processes North and South which have 
led us to this civil war, he ever strove, by adjustment, to avoid their dis- 
astrous effects. History will be false to her trust, if she does not write 
that Stephen A. Douglas was a patriot of matchless purity, and a states- 
man who, foreseeing and warning, tried his utmost to avert the dangers 



216 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGKESS. 

which are now so liard to repress. Nor will she permit those who now 
praise his last gi-eat effort for the Union to qualify it by sinister reflections 
upon his former conduct ; for thus they tarnish the lustre of a life devoted, 
in peace and in war, to the preservation of the Union. His fame. never 
had eclipse. Its disk has been ever bright to the eye of history. It sank 
below the horizon, hke the sun of the Morea, full-orbed, and in the full blaze 
of its splendor. How much we shall miss him here ! How can we, his 
associates, do without his counsel? No longer does the murmur go 
round that Douglas is speaking in the Senate ; no longer does the House 
become quorumless to listen to his voice ! His death is like the dissolu- 
tion of a political organism. Indeed, we could better afford to lose a 
sphere of stars from our flag ; for these might wander to return. But 
Douglas cannot be brought back to us. He who had such a defiant 
power, with the " thews of Analdm and the pulses of a Titan's heart," 
has gone upon a returnless journey. How much shall we miss him noio! 
We have so long regarded the political, social, geogi'aphical, and com- 
mercial necessities to which our Government was adapted as rendering 
it eternal, that its present condition calls for new and rare elements of 
statesmanship. Are we equal to the time and the trust ? Oh ! for a 
Clay, a Webster, a Douglas, in this great ordeal of constitutional free- 
dom ! While the country is entangled by these serpents of revolution, 
we shall miss the giant — ^the Hercules of the West — whose limbs had 
grown sinewy in strangling the poisonous brood ! 

Who is left to take his place ? Alas ! he has no successor. His 
eclipse is painfully palpable, since it makes more obscure the path by 
which our alienated brethren may return. Many Union men, friends of 
Douglas in the South, heard of his demise as the death knell of their 
loyal hope. Who, who can take his place? The great men of 1850, 
who were his mates in the Senate, are gone, we trust, to that better Union 
above, where there are no distracting covinsels — all, all gone ! All? No ! 
thank Heaven ! Kentucky still spares to us one of kindred patriotism, 
fashioned in the better mould of an earlier day — the distinguished states- 
man who has just spoken [Mr. Crittenden], whose praise of Douglas 
living I loved to quote, and whose praise of Douglas dead, to which we 
have just listened, '■'■ laudari a viro ZotttcZaio," is praise indeed ; Critten- 
den still stands here, lifting on high his whitened head, like a Pharos in 
the sea, to guide our storm-tossed and storm-tattered vessel to its haven 
of rest. His feet tread closely upon the retreating steps of our states- 
man of the West. In the order of nature, we cannot have him long. 
Already his hand is outstretched into the other world to grasp the hand 
of Douglas ! While we have him, let us heed his warning, learn from 
his lips the lessons of moderation and loyalty of the elder days, and do 
all and do it nobly for our beloved Republic ! 

In conclusion, sir, Ave can only worthily praise Stephen A. Douglas, 
by doing something to carry out the v/ill which he left his childx'en and 
his country : 

" Love and uphold the Constitution of the United States." 

I speak it all reverently when I say that this was his religion. He 
had faith in that 



EULOGY OF STEPHEN AKNOLD DOUGLAS. 217 

" creed of creeds, 
The loveliness of perfect deeds." 

I would not seek to disclose the future to which God has consigned 
him in the mysterious order of his providence ; but such virtue as his can- 
not die. It begins to live most in death. Of it may be said," as the lau- 
reate of England sang, that transplanted human Avorth will bloom, to 
profit, otherwhere. The distinguished gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. 
Crittenden] has alluded to the fact that the mind of Douglas expanded 
with his public service. It has been my own humble observation that he 
was one among the few public men who gi'ew in moral height with men- 
tal breadth. Year after year iuspii'cd him with more of reverence and 
charity; while his "psalm of life" found expression in daily duty done. 
He never shrank from the dust and heat of active life. He most desired 
to live when dangers Averc gathering thickest. He would not ask from 
us to-day tears and plaints, but words Avhich bear the spirit of great deeds, 
"tremendous and stupendous" efforts to save the Government he loved 
so well. We may toll the slow bell for his noble spirit ; we may crape 
the arm in token of our woe ; we may, while we think of the meannesses 
of our politics and the distractions of our country, congratulate him that 
he is wrapped in his shroud, forever safe in the memory of the just : but 
if we would worthily honor him, let us moderate the heats of party strife ; 
enlarge our view of national affairs ; emulate his clear-eyed patriotism, 
which saw in no section his country, but loved all sections alike ; and hold 
up his life, so fruitful in wisdom beyond his years, for the admiration of 
the old ; and picture him for the imitation of the young as that 

" Divinely gifted man 
Whose life in low estate began ; 
Who grasped the skirts of happy chance, 
Breasted the blows of circumstance, 

And made by force his merit known ; 
And lived to clutch the golden keys, 
To mould a mighty State's decrees. 

And shape the whisper of the throne ; 
And moving up from high to higher. 

Becomes on fortune's crowning slope 

The pillar of a people's hope, 
The centre of a world's desire ! " 

But, sir, no language, either in prose or verse, can portray the greats 
ness of his loss. His fame is printed in the hearts of the people. From 
the Green Mountains of his native State to the white tops of the Pacific 
Sierras, while the heavens bend above our land to bless it, the rivers roll 
and the mountains stand to unite it, or the ceaseless interchange of traffic 
and thought goes on by sea and rail, by telegraph or post — the people of 
America, from whose midst, as a poor boy, by his own self-reliance, he 
sprung, will preserve in the Pantheon of their hearts, to an immortal 
memory, the name of Stephen Arnold Douglas. 



YI. 
CIVIL WAR. 

REPLY TO HON. MR. GURLET — BULL RUN DEPICTED — CONGRESSMEN ON THE 

FIELD — EAGLES AND DOVES WARRIORS AND MINISTERS VINDICATION 

OF GEN. MCCLELLAN — CONGRESSIONAL WAR CRITICS — ^PERVERSION AND 
PROLONGATION OF THE WAR. 

Delivered in the House of Bepresentatives, January 31, 1862. 

Mr. Chairman : I obtained the floor on yesterday to give a prompt 
answer to the elaborate attack made by my colleague [Mr. Gurley] on 
General McClellan. I was not aware that my colleague had thus pre- 
pared himself, although it was bruited about that we were to have a dis- 
sertation on the conduct of this war which would annihilate its present 
managers. I wish that my colleague could plead the impulse of the mo- 
ment for his speech ; but I give more significance to his labored effort be- 
cause it betokens a plan — one in which my colleague plays his role — to 
get rid of the gallant Major-General in whom repose the hopes and the 
confidence of the people. If his speech had been made by a Democrat, 
it would have been said that it was an attempt to aid secession ; to cripple 
our credit at home and our honor abroad ; to undermine the popular faith 
in the power of the Government to conquer peace and restore the Union. 
It would have deserved, according to the practice, a prison in a sea-bound 
castle. 

I do not understand, nor will I attempt to analyze, the motives of my 
colleague. If I were to judge of his intent by the effect of his speech, he 
would discourage the army in their efforts, and the people in their payment 
of taxes. His speech will aid the rebellion, not so much because it was 
spoken by him, as because it seems to be a part of a plan, outside and in- 
side of this House, to beget distrust and sow discord. I do not know, sir, 
how much weight will be attributed to my colleague's military strictures. 
If his facts are no better than his conclusions — and I will demonstrate that 
neither are correct — his speech will only go for what it is worth — the 
scolding of an unmilitary Congressman. My colleague began with the 
cry that generals are nothing ; that if any general was incompetent, to take 
him away, lie read from the Richmond " Dispatch" to show the errors 
which our generals had committed. The article read was so full of slan- 



crv^iL WAE. 219 

der and falsehood that he himself corrected a part of it. He charged the 
Cominander-in-Chief Avith causelessly holding back our eager soldiers for 
months. He charged him with denying to them the victory which was 
in theii' reach. He said that no man living was fit to command over 
three hundred thousand. 

Mr. GuELEY. I said six hundred thousand. 

Mr. Cox. I have read the gentleman's speech in the " Globe," and I am 
iright. Pie further said that it was not only anti-republican and unwise, 
ibut alarming to the last degree. He found fault with the General's plan — 
as he claimed to know it — to attack the enemy's whole line at once at all 
points. He said this was unwise because it Avas impossible. He did not 
{ approve of the General's " nice and precise adjustment of military affairs " 
! before the army moved. He wanted the army to overwhelm the enemy 
Avithout Avaiting for orders from Washington City. He then undertook, by 
a statement of facts as to the affairs at Eomney, in Missouri, and Kentucky, 
to depreciate the character of the Commander-in-Chief. He demanded 
tluit the army should move at all hazards^ unrestrained by a single hand. 
Ill' thought he saw in the accession of Mr. Stanton a streak of sunlight, 
for he (Mr. Stanton) Avas like brave Ben Wade, of Ohio. He thought, 
if we did not move soon, our reputation as a military people Avould about 
equal that of the Chinese ; and then my colleague AA^ound up his speech 
by the figure of the anaconda, in which he tried to be humorous at the 
expense of General Scott, who originated the trope ; and finally he was 
for stirring up the anaconda, even though, like the snakes from Tenedos 
in Virgil, it Avound its coils around the most sacred of our hopes to crush 
them forever. This is the analysis of my colleague's speech. 

On the very eve, sir, of the most important moA'ements, and when, 
too, our army in one section has already given earnest in carrying out 
successfully one part of General McClellan's scheme. Ave have this most 
inopportune display of impatience. I would rather have heard it from 
any other than an Ohio member. Ohio gave McClellan his first com- 
mission. I remember to have seen him Avhen he came Avith alacrity to 
her capital to accept this mark of our Governor's trust. Hoav Avell he 
repaid the confidence, Western Virginia can answer ; and if all his plans 
there had been carried out by subordinates with a vigor equal to their 
wisdom, Ave would have had less trouble and more glory in that campaign. 

As to the advent of the new Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, whom 
my colleague hails as a " streak of light" in the gloom, I do not believe 
that he Avill delight in any such hailing, coupled with such railing at his 
friend, the General. It is too much like the " All hail ! " of the witches 
to jMacbeth. [Laughter.] There lurks a sinister object in this congrat- 
ulation. It was intended as a depreciation of McClellan ; as if the er- 
rors and incompetency of the late Secretary of War ought to be shared 
by the General. I, sir, as much and more sincerely than my colleague, 
welcome the ncAV Secretary. But my colleague Avould hurry the arii.y 
into a movement now " at all hazards," because foreign nations may soun 
interfere. I do not understand this logic. He Avould liaA^e us risk every 
thing for fear of trouble from abroad. We may have foreign Avar ; but 
this nation should not hazard its own existence from a servile fear of Eng- 
land or France. If he had been a Democrat, he would not have been so 



220 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

fearful of every movement abroad. Choate said he loved the old De*' 
raocracj because they had " a gay and festive defiance of foreign dictai 
tion." 

Mr. GuuLEY. That is the party of which I was a member. 

Mr. Cox. Then my colleague has been a renegade to his ancient 
faith. I am sorry for it. We would be unworthy of our fathers and oft 
our land did we fire our own house over our heads because we may feari 
that a neighbor will come some night to despoil it. 

My colleague objects to the organization of an army with one head. 
He wants a many-headed arrangement, with, I suppose, distracting coun- 
sels. Utterly unconscious of the absolute necessity of unity of move- 
ment by our armies, under one direction, my colleague, to strike at Gen- 
eral McClellan, would change the military system Avhich has obtained! 
from the time war began or armies Avere levied. My colleague has a mil- 
itary wisdom beyond all human comprehension. Because our army is- 
large we must, on this logic, dispense with its proper organization. There 
is the more need of one executive head to so vast an array as this army 
of half a million. 

My colleague, in this attack upon the general in command, meant to 
attack also the President, or he meant nothing. He knew that the Presi- 
dent was General McClellan's superior officer ; that all that McClellan 
had done or had not done was approved by the President. He was, how- 
ever, gracious enough to say that the President would not set up his opinion i 
in military matters in antagonism to his general-in-chief ; and he would, , 
no doubt, for this, commend the good sense of Mr. Lincoln, as I do. . 
But if the President in thus acting was sensible, what sort of sense is it 
for a member of Congress, whose life has been passed, too, in thumping 
the pulpit desk [laughter], and whose thoughts have been less upon the 
eagle and more upon the dove, to set up his opinion against that of the 
general in command? K it were not bad sense, it would be nonsense. 
Why did not my colleague, if his motive was good, go to the President, 
and with his array of maps, telegraphs, deeds of omission and commission, 
lay before the President his military conceptions ? Why does he have them 
delivered here, before the nation ? Was it to display his military erudition ? 
Or was it to gratify what he thinks was the popular prejudice and impa- 
tience, to which he would administer, regardless of consequences? Why 
did he not go to General McClellan and verify his facts before he used 
them for the public disservice ? 

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman had been a skilful commander, or 
had, like the gentleman from New York [Mr. Roscoe Conkltng], the 
humane motive for investigating the confessed blunder at Ball's BluflT, in 
which many brave men were lost, I could tolerate this mischievous line of 
debate. 

But, sir, my colleague compete me to examine into his merits as a 
militaiy critic particularly, and the propriety of military "movements" 
here in Congress and elsewhere by civilians. My colleague will admit 
that he is not a military man by education, nor a soldier, like Falstaff, on 
instinct. [Laughter.] His profession was that of a gospeller. [Laugh- 
ter.] Plis studies do not fit him to discuss martial subjects. We do not 
go to a blacksmith to have our watch repaired, nor to a watchmaker to 



CIVIL WAR. 221 

have our horse shod. We do not go to Carolina for cliecse [laughter], 
nor to the Western Reserve for cotton. I can well imagine how a fine 
scholar, as is my colleague, might, like Beaumont's " Elder Brother," sit 
in his study, mount upon the wings of speculation, and 

" hourly converse 
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsel.'', 
Calling their victories, if unjustly got, 
' Unto a strict account, and in his fancy 

Deface their ill-placed statues." 

But, sir, criticism on the art of war, to be valuable now, must be 
backed by specific study and experience. What has been the study and 
expei-ience of my colleague ? 

The country w^as thoroughly disgusted with the part Congressmen 
played at Bull Run. [Laughter in the galleries.] It may be remem- 
bered with what jocund levity the House adjourned to go over to see our 
army march upon Richmond. Not one of us ever got there, except my 
friend from New York [Mr. Ely] [laughter], who made his exile so 
conspicuously honorable in the use he made of it in behalf of his fellow- 
prisoners. The House may remember that I opposed the adjournment 
then on the ground that, by going over the river, we would only get in 
the way of the soldiers. It turned out that the soldiers got in the way of 
the Congressmen, [Laughter.] 

I have a letter, written by a member of this House, and published in 
an Ohio paper, which details, with graphic accuracy, the part displayed 
by truculent Congressmen on that day. I will have it read at the Clerk's 
table. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

"Just as the dragoons turned back, a cry was raised that the Black Horse, a foiinida- 
ble body of the rebel cavalry (and these were part of them), were charging upon us, and 
it seemed as if the very devil of panic and cowardice seized every mortal soldier, officer, 
citizen, and teamster. No officer tried to rally the soldiers, or do any thing, except to 
spring and run toward Centreville. There never was any thing like it for causeless, sheer, 
absolute, absurd cowardice, or rather panic, on this miserable earth before. 

" Oft" they went, one and all ; off" do^Ti the highway, over across fields toward the 
woods, anywhere, everywhere, to escape. Whether it communicated back to the soldiers 
etill in the woods, and so on back to the regiments who had just driven off the rebels, I 
do not know, but think it did to a part of them, for a share of our ai'my seems to have 
been demoralized, if not broken up. 

" Well, the further they ran tlie more frightened they grew, and although we moved 
on as rapidly as we could, the fugitives passed us by scores. To enable them better to 
i"un, they threw away their blankets, knapsacks, canteens, and finally muskets, cartridge- 
boxes, and every thing else. 

" We called to them, tried to tell them there was no danger, called them to stop, im- 
plored them to stand. We called them cowards, denounced them in the most offensive 
terms, put out our heavy revolvers, and threatened to shoot them, but all in vain ; a cruel, 
crazy, mad, hopeless panic possessed them, and communicated to everybody about in 
front and rear. 

" The heat was awful, although now about six ; the men were exhausted — their mouths 
gaped, their lips cracked and blackened with the powder of the cartridges they had bitten 
off in the battle, their eyes starting in frenzy ; no mortal ever saw such a mass of ghastly 
VTvetchea. 

" As we came on, borne along with the mass, unable to go ahead or pause, or draw 
out of it, with the street blocked with flying baggage wagons, before and behind, thunder- 
ing and crashing on, we were every moment exposed to imminent danger of being upset, 
or crushed, or of breaking down ; and for the first time on this strange day I felt a little 



222 EIGHT YEARS EST C0NGEES8. 

Binkin"" of the heart, and doubt whether we could avoid destruction in the immense throng 
about us • and nothing but the remarkable skill of our driver, and the strength of our 
carria"-e and endurance of our horses, saved us. Another source of peril beset us. As 
we passed the poor demented, exhausted wretches who could not chmb into the high, close 
ba"-"a"-e-wagons, they made frantic efforts to get on to and into our carriage. They 
grasped it everywhere, and gpt on to it, into it, over it, and implored us every way to 
take them on. We had to be rough with them. At first they loaded us down to almost 
a stand-still, and we had to push them off and throw them out. Finally, Brown and I, 
with a pistol each, kept them out, although one poor devil got in in spite of us, and we. 
lugged the infernal coward two miles. I finally opened the door and he was tumbled out.'"] 

Mr. Cox. Now hear what these brave Congressmen actually did toe 
stay the tide of retreat : 

"The other side of Centrevillewe had overtaken Senators Wade and Chandler, ori 
saw them in the crowd, the Sergeaut-at-Arms of the Senate, and a Mr. Eaton, of Detroit, , 
with whom we were in company much of the way afterwards. 

'' Wade planted himself with a cocked ' Maynard ' in the attitude of battle [laughter] ; 
Chandler with a revolver, near him; and we planted ourselves — except Morris — by^ 
them ; and all with loud voices commanded one and all to halt, or have their brains 
blown out. Our action instantly checked them. Many on horseback undertook to dash 
by, and we seized the bridle-reins of their horses and compelled them to stop. 

" Seven men staying a crowd maddened and desperate with fear ; Wade, firm and 
bold as an old lion ; Chandler frantically excited, and the rest of our band struggling, 
commanding, entreating, and threatening. As for me, I acted just as you know I would t 
WHEN thoroughly ROUSED — [laughter] — caring for nothing and nobody, and determined, I 
as we all were, that the men should stop there." 

Mr. GuRLEY. I wish to ask my colleague — 

The Chairman. Does the gentleman yield the floor to his colleague ?': 

Mr. Cox. I do not mean to convey the impression that my colleague 
wrote it. It is a scrap of history, written by a Republican Congressman. 

Mr. GuRLEY. I desire to say I am not the author of it. 

Mr. Cox. But to the account given in this letter. It is this Senator r 
Wade, "firm and bold," whom my colleague eulogized as so "brave,' 
and who was heralded in the New York " Tribune " as likely to succeed the 
sick and dying McClellan a few weeks since — who was urged by certain i 
parties for the post now held by Mr. Stanton, and whose reelection to the 
Senate is so much desired now by a faction at home, and who is lugged 
into this debate to be glorified here that he may shine at home. It is this 
Senator Wade, Avith the aid of Chandler, who "cocked his Maynard I 
in the attitude of battle" [laughter], and helped, with the " calls of or-- 
der " from the other Congressmen, to stay the maddened crowd of fugi- • 
tives. The people who have been under the impression that the crowd I 
never stopped till they got into Washington, will now be gratified to learn i 
that the Congressmen won the Bull Run battle against our own soldiers. . 
[Laughter.] I refer to this precious bit of history only to show how ' 
Congressmen fit themselves for military criticism. 

My colleague, yesterday, said he was at Bull Run, and made as good I 
a retreat as Sigcl. He was asked then about the battle of Fredericktown, , 
in which he said he was present. 

Mr. GuRLEY. I did not say I was present at that battle. 

Mr. Cox. Very well. He showed in answer to the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Kellogg], whose brave brother-in-law fought that fight, that 
he knew nothing about it. My colleague said he preferred not to go into 
" details." I wanted the details, sir. I needed them to estimate the 



CIVIL WAE. 223 

I military experience of my colleague. If liis part has been as inglorious 
I there as it Avas at Bull Run, I submit that I must be careful how I tako 

his conclusions about McClellan. 
I There will be, Mr. Chairman, empyrics in medicine, pretenders in re- 
ligion, pettifoggers in law, mushrooms in vegetation, secessionists in Gov- 
\ ernment, and snobs in society ; and we must not be surprised at military 
I wiseacres in Congress ! [Laughter.] Since my colleague has hurled the 
I glove at McClellan, I have a right to examine his claims as a critic. He 
admits being at Bull "Run. His masterly activity on the retreat he ad- 
mits. How that retreat was eiFected I only know from rumor. I have 
seen it reported — and perhaps it is as apocryi^hal as some of the facts upon 
which my colleague arraigns General McClellan — that my coUeagxie, after 
his fatiguing race to Centreville, and having passed that point with the 
speed of Gilpin — and not having the benefit of a carriage like the Congress- 
man who kicked out of it the tired soldiers besmutched with their cart- 
ridges in battle — was careering along like the devil [laughter] in Milton, 
where he is described as flying 

" O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, 
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, 
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies" — 

until luckily he met — what think you, noble Representatives ? — a herd of 
stampeded cattle, who were from my own beloved district — Texas cattle, 
sir, Avintered in the Scioto valley, and selected by their drover for their 
stampeding propensity [laughter], when, seizing upon the extreme rear 
of a noble bull, he was borne from the field, holding on with vigorous pre- 
hension to the tail of the animal ! [Great laughter.] This was Bull Run 
indeed ! 

Mr. GuRLET. That is a poetical sketch of my colleague. It is a thing 
that never took place. 

Mr. Cox. I am glad to hear it. 

Mr. Edgerton. I rise to a question of order. It is out of order for 
members of the House to applaud, cheer, or laugh in the manner they have 
been doing (laughter), and I submit — 

Mr. Cox. Does the gentleman make that point on me ? I have not 
applauded, cheered, nor laughed. 

Mr. Edgerton. I submit that order should be preserved on the floor 
of the House. 

The Chairman. The point of order is well taken. 

Mr. Edgerton. I hope the Chair will enforce the rules. 

The Chairman. The Chair is satisfied that when gentlemen consider 
the impropriety of any disturbance, it will not occur again. 

Mr. Wtckliffe. I acknowledge a violation of order. I laughed ; 
but for my life's sake I could not help it. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Cox. I will do justice to my colleague [Mr. Gurlet.] I put 
this as an apocryphal case, which I heard as a rumor. I am glad to do 
justice to him, and to that noble animal, my constituent, and to Avhom 
the gentleman should have apologized, if the story were true. I was 
about to commend this strategy of my colleague, for its quick sense of 
the commissary advantages. I deprecate his drawing on that or any ex- 
perience at Bull Run to read the gifted McClellan and this Congress a 



224: EIGHT TEAKS IN C0NGEES8. 

homily on military affairs. The ancient warriors rode in their scythed l| 
chariots ; the Avarriors on the South American pampas dash off with 
their lasso on horseback ; the ancient Germans went into battle as our 
Indians do, with terrific yells and in painted horror ; the courtly knight 
dashed into the tourney with iron-clad armor and vizor down. Various 
as human ingenuity are the modes of human warfare, both on the advance 
and in retreat ; bvit never, sir, in the accounts of Xenophon or Marshal 
Saxe ; from the time of Joshua to General Taylor ; in the contests of 
Achilles or Garibaldi, have we so unique a performance as this supposi-. 
titious race of my constituent and my colleague from the fields of Bull 
Run. [Laughter.] Does he. claim that this, if true, would make him a 
military expert? 

But my colleague was undaunted. As soon as Bull Run was over, 
and Congress adjourned, the telegraph thrilled both in wire and pole to 
bear the tidings West, that " Colonel Gurley, of Ohio," was about to 
assume the post of aid to General Fremont. Fremont was then in the 
ascendant. Before him lay what seemed to be the enchanted chambers of 
power. He had the magic lamp, which made gold as common as the peb- 
bles, and my colleague hastened to his side. Some men smiled. They 
thought it strange that a minister should forget the beatitudes of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount for the disquietudes of a Missouri camp. [Laughter.] 
They thought that the affluent experience of Bull Run was not of that kind 
to excite confidence that my colleague would shine in the new field of Mars 
to which his patriotism hurried him. But I, sir, knew my colleague bet- 
ter. I admired his patriotism. I thought of Peter the Hermit. [Laugh 
ter.] I saw in his hand the crozier and the sword, and Bull Run did not 
obscure the sign in the sky — in hoc signo vinces ! I had read in Ivanhoe 
of the priestly Knight of Malta ; and I knew that this new " son of 
Malta " [laughter] would carve out such a reputation that the muse of 
history would proudly stoop from her Parnassian seat to say : " Let it he 
so recorded " [Laughter.] But, sir, disappointment followed close on 
expectation. A week — perhaps two, or three — and Fremont lost his 
magic lamp. He waned under the consuming lens of " Blair's rheto- 
ric." [Laughter.] His ill-starred fate was perceived by my colleague. 
At this critical juncture the only parallel I can find for my colleague is 
the description which is given of Job's war horse : '■' Canst thou make 
him afraid as a grasshopper ? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He 
paweth in the valley, and rcjoiceth in his strength. He swalloweth the 
ground with fierceness and rage ; neither believeth he that it is the sound 
of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, ha ! ha ! and he smelleth 
the battle afar off." [Great laughter.] The parallel fails only in one 
regard. While the war horse of Job was advancing, that of my colleague 
was retreating. Leaving his campaign in Missouri unfinished, he flew 
from Fremont to Ohio, with the " certainty, celerity, and security" of a 
star bid in the Post Office Department. [Laughter.] 

What he learned in his bloodless campaign in Missouri ; how much he 
perceived of the value of the fortifications around St. Louis — in cash, I 
mean ; what estimate he made of the strength of the Fremont horse ; 
what martial achievements he witnessed in the antechaml^er of the short- 
lived western General, he did not, and we cannot, tell. One thing he 



CIVIL WAR. 225 

corrects to-day, and we must deduct that from his military life, that he 
was not at the battle of Fredericktown, though I understood him yester- 
day to say he was there. But has my colleague any actual experience? 
lias he ever killed anyone? Did he ever see a man killed in battle ? 
Did he ever speak to a man who saw a man killed in battle ? Did he 
ever hear the whiz of deadly lead? Was his heart brave and his face 
unblanched ? My colleague quoted that Fredericktown fight to show that 
a battle could be fought and won without McClellan's orders, and in spite 
of orders. That was his point, if any. Now, I happen to know that 
there was nothing in General McClellan's orders to forbid that movement 
on FredericktoAvn. As I understood the case, it was fought by Colonel 
Ross, who was sent by General Grant to follow after Jeff Thompson. 
He overtook him unexpectedly, and fought well. General Grant ap- 
proved and complimented his action. 

I wish that my colleague would cultivate some faith in General 
McClellan. He is a minister of the Gospel, a Universalist minister, and 
is full of faith in the salvation of all men. I glory in according to him 
the fullest " soul liberty " in religion. His creed includes the salvation of 
all — embracing in its comprehensive faith Jeff Davis, Jeff Thompson, 
Wigfall, and all that crowd of conspicuous sinners. [Laughter.] He 
believes that Zollicdffer is now in glory ; he can even see Humphrey Mar- 
shall entering, as my colleague from Cleveland once said of John Brown, 
" the pearly gates of Paradise " — and that too without the enlargement 
of the gates of Paradise or the lessening of the bulk of Marshall. He can, 
with his eye of faith, and in his universal benevolence, seethe Falstaffian 
Kentuckian, this mountain of secession mummy, squeeze through the 
celestial doors [laughter], and larding the golden pavements of the New 
Jerusalem [laughter] ; but he cannot exercise a little faith, just the size 
of a mustard seed, in the prescience, skill, and sagacity of our accom- 
plished young general. 

Oh ! if there is one thing more beautiful than another, it is that trust 
which we repose in Another in the dark hours of trial and death. It is said 
that reason was the first born, but faith inherits the blessing. Reason is apt 
to be fallible, short-sighted, eager, impetuous, and impatient of contradic- 
tion ; while faith is gentle and docile, ever ready to listen to the voice 
by which alone truth and wisdom can effectually reach her. God has 
created two lights — the greater light to rule the busy day — reason ; the 
lesser to rule the contemplative night — faith ; but faith shines only so long 
as she reflects something of the illumination of the brighter orb. Where 
a man has no faith he has no light of reason. There are some things in 
which a man must exercise his trust. The American people, unlike my 
colleague, have read the history of General McClellan. They know his 
military studies, his travel and observation, his practical raiboad life, his 
mode of dealing with men and bodies of men, his prudential reserAC, his 
unfailing patience, patriotism, and confidence in his own resources. They 
know that the enemy would have been glad to have had him at the head 
of their forces. They know that he has never blundered ; that he is safe, 
if not brilliant ; that his power to surprise and combine are rare qualities 
of his military genius ; that his knowledge of topography, engineering, 
and field strategy, his method and industry, and his quick apprehension 
15 



226 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

of military strength and weakness, eminently fit him for this high com- 
mand. Knowing this and reasoning upon this, now that the night is upon 
us, they will keep their faith in him, and no hostile criticism of the gen- 
tleman here can shake that faith. The attack of my colleague is like 
that of a " pigmy with a straw against a giant cased in adamant." 

My colleague is not satisfied with any thing short of an advance at every 
hazard. He is not satisfied with the President, for the latter defers to 
McClellan ; not satisfied with any commander-in-chief, for no one can 
command even three hundred thousand men ; not satisfied with what has 
been done ; not satisfied with what is to be done. He would discourage 
all our efforts, aud make taxation weigh like a useless burden on an 
anxious and saddened people. His policy would disorganize the army, 
and realize his theology by making a hell on earth [laughter] without 
giving us the satisfaction of a future state, where secession may have its 
fit eternal doom. [Laughter.] 

So much for the critic. Now Avhat is the criticism ? First, he carries 
us to Missouri, and says that General Curtis was sent with some ten 
thousand men against Price, when there was almost a certainty of Price's 
capture, when all at once an order came from a general officer, either 
there or here, which called a halt, and nothing was done. Now, my col- 
league meant that either General McClellan or General Halleck, by his 
hesitation and delay, has allowed the campaign against Price to be sus- 
pended, if not abandoned. I do not care which general he meant ; it is 
simply not true that either of them has been thus derelict. The facts are 
these : Generals Curtis, Sigel, and Asboth had been ordered toward 
Springfield to attack Price, if it was thought best in their judgment. 
They sent forward a large cavalry reconnoissance, and found that inde- 
fatigable and able General Price in such force that they concluded to 
hold a council of war, and decided that six additional regiments were 
needed. On notifying General Halleck, he at once ordered them from 
General Pope's command near Sedalia, to move on to the scene of opera- 
tions. General Halleck's opinion, in a letter received by General McClel- 
lan only two days ago, was that they would either beat Price or drive him 
out of Missouri, Perhaps my colleague never got as far as Springfield, 
and he does not know the strategy of Price. Price has ventured to appear 
in force in southwestern Missouri ; but he takes care to be within con- 
venient reach of the Boston Mountains, where he can hide in that almost 
inaccessible locality, and where it is easier for him to go than our generals 
to follow. But it is utterly unjust to General McClellan to say that he 
has restrained the eager impetuosity of the Missouri soldiers. General 
Halleck has received no orders inconsistent with the most prompt move- 
ment in Missouri. When General Halleck took command of the army in 
Missouri, he found mountains of difficulty to overcome — as Buell did in 
Kentucky, as McClellan did here — in the organization and equipment of 
the troops. General Halleck found, it is true, a fine paper organization. 
He has labored with a statesman's foresight, a pubhcist's learning, and a 
soldier's skill to bring order out of chaos. He found troops without con- 
centration, and required arms, transportation, and supplies, which General 
McClellan had strained every nerve to afford. There has been no delay 
by any orders of General McClellan. His orders to Halleck, as to Buell, 



civrL WAE. 227 

have been to hurry his movements as fast as it was safe and possible. I 
state these as the positive facts of the case ; and if gentlemen want the 
facts, let them go to the headquarters and they can have them. 

Again, my colleague makes the specific charge that he is informed, 
on authority which he is not permitted to question — nor I suppose to 
quote — that some ten or fifteen thousand Confederate troops, near Ronmey, 
were in the power of our army of forty thousand, and that the capture 
so easy was not made, because an order came from headquarters here not 
to advance. This is a charge as sweeping as it is irresponsible and 
groundless. I do not care who is his authority, I question it here, and 
now. My colleague reads certain telegraphs which have strangely come 
into his possession, to show that Lander and KeUey despatched that they 
could take the rebels, and all that was wanted was an order ; and presto ! 
they are taken ! We have had a good many such successes in anticipa- 
tion. I believe we had one at Piketon. It is said that General Lander 
telegraphed and General Kelley sent a messenger to apprise each other 
of the absolute certainty of success. General Lander I admire for his 
caution and intrepidity ; but I will state the facts to which I suppose my 
colleague refers. I state them correctly. General Lander went to re- 
lieve General Kelley at Romney, Kelley being sick. He reached Han- 
cock on the 5th of January. He found the enemy under General Jack- 
son, on the other side of the river, in considerable strength — say fifteen 
or sixteen thousand. The enemy had driven a few of our troops across 
the river. When General Lander reached his post, the enemy were shell- 
ing, or about to sheU, Hancock. General Jackson summoned General 
Lander to surrender. Lander declined. Jackson shelled away at Han- 
cock without effect. Lander sent for reenforcements. General McClellan 
sent one of Banks' brigades by forced marches at once. While there, 
General Lander sent two or three long despatches, " suggesting various 
movements to cut off Jackson. General Jackson had a shorter distance 
to return to Winchester than General Banks had to march to cut off Jack- 
son! s retreat, besides the river, which it would take forty-eight hours to 
cross, as they had no ready means of crossing. General McClellan re- 
fused to trust a command to cross the river under those circumstances, 
with no chances of retreat provided. General Lander then sent another 
despatch to General Banks, criticizing the President, General Banks, and 
others ; to which General McClellan replied that General Lander was 
" too suggestive and critical." I think here is the rub ; McCleUan had 
seen enough of the Ball's Bluft* business — that affair to which I refer 
only to say that no one attaches the responsibility to General McClel- 
lan for that terrible disaster. He knew what the gentleman from New 
York depicted so graphically, that to cross a river like the Potomac, in 
the face of an enemy, and with no means of retreat, was almost insanity. 
He did what a prudent general, having his own plans matured, ought to 
have done ; and here I distinctly say that General Banks wrote a letter, 
in which, from his standpoint, he entirely commended the action of Gen- 
eral McClellan. And now, and here, we have our general arraigned by 
my colleague on facts not authentic ; and when, so far as we can see, my 
colleague's military experience does not reach so far as to tell, by practice, 
the rear rank from the front, or the breach from the muzzle of a musket ! 



228 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGKESS. 

I have replied to these complaints in detail. Now for these general 
complaints of no movement, so glibly rehearsed by the gentleman. It is 
complained that General McClellan has not moved, that nothing has been 
done, and that nothing is about to be done ; that he does not let cm'ious 
people know what he is about. If he is doing nothing, as they allege, he 
has nothing to divulge to these curious gentlemen. If he is doing some- 
thin"-, the very way to undo it is to let them know it, for they are as leaky 
as the present weather, or Oregon, where it is said to rain fifty-two weeks 
in the year. But has he done any thing ? I say that he has done all that he 
could safely. McClellan has not merely perfected the defences of Wash- 
ington and the Potomac ; but, considering the fact that the force and spirit 
of the South are concentrated here on the Potomac, and near our capital, 
and c6nsidering the untoward season, weather, and roads, is it nothing 
that he has, as a Richmond paper asserts, held Beauregard and his army 
as in a vice ; and that, too, when the enemy have all the advantage of an 
equal army, a railroad for concentration in the rear, and a power of com- 
bination, impossible for our general? But he has delayed too long here ; 
and he is taken to task now because he does not move his army to cer- 
tain destruction, by assaulting an enemy equal in number to his own, and 
that, too, in their intrenchments. My answer to this querulous question- 
ing is, first, that my colleague himself gives a reason why no movement 
could have been made the past three weeks, because he says that the ar- 
tillery would go under the mud. Very Avell ; does he want that done ? 
Had the roads been on the 21st of July last as they are now, my colleague 
would not have been able to have escaped the companionship of my friend 
from New York. Second, when General McClellan, took command here 
— I say it without any desire to reflect on General Scott — he found things 
disorganized, and no combinations between different parts of this grand 
army. He had to construct intrenchments, and make the army effective 
in many details. This he has done. Indefatigable even unto sickness, 
he has accomplished what my colleague's "brave Wade" could never 
have done, had he studied tactics and war for a century. And third, he 
never contemplated a movement on the enemy's intrenchments. It is not 
too much to say here that he intended first to have General Buell get the 
Tennessee Raih-oad ; that for this end he has given all his energies to aid 
him and hasten him in this purpose. All that Buell asked for — arms, 
transportation, troops — have been furnished. When General Buell took 
command, he found his troops straggling and scattered. He had to gather 
them, and concentrate and form them in divisions. He has had bad 
roads and bad weather ; but I know the fact, when I declare to this 
Congress and the people, that no delay of General Buell's movements is 
attributable to any orders from McClellan. On the contrary, he has or- 
dered him to hasten with all despatch ; not to lose a day or an hour in 
the accomplishment of the design to seize the Tennessee Railroad, to the 
end that not only shall Eastern Tennessee be opened to the army of the 
Union ; not only to give relief to the Union men of Tennessee, about 
whom my colleague makes so injudicious a jeremiade ; but to the grand 
aim, to cut off this rebel army of the Potomac, not alone from the line 
of their supplies, but from their line of retreat ! 

In Kentucky we have more than one hundi-ed thousand soldiers, ready, 



CIVIL WAR. 229 

eager, active, and triumphant whenever they have had any chance in a 
battle. McClellan's orders are for the speediest movement there possible. 
My colleague praises the recent victory of our troops at Mill Spring. 
I share with him, as my constituents did with his, the pride of that hard- 
fought encounter ; but I will not shame my State, whicli called McClellan 
to her service, by plucking the laurels from his brow, when there is not a 
soldier in that battle who will not rejoice to see him wear them, as well 
for his conduct in Western Virginia, as for the strategy by whicli even 
the Mill Spring battle was directed, though at a distance. It was, as I 
said, a part of his design upon the Tennessee Railroad ; and there is no 
impediment, but every encouragement from him, for General Buell to 
forward the movement to that desired end. In Eastern Kentucky, Hum- 
phrey Marshall has proved that while his spirit was willing, his^es/i was 
weak [laughter], before the Ohio soldiers uQder Garfield. Zollicoffer 
has been killed and his forces routed ; and nothing but the impediments 
of nature prevents our soldiers from lifting our ensign upon the mountains 
of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama. In fear for the fate of 
Memphis, Beauregard is hurried out to Columbus, Kentucky, to avert 
the northern avalanche which impends there ; while Buell, with consum- 
mate skill, is di'awing his fatal lines around the Confederates, as the lines 
have been drawn in Virginia. 

But it is said the Potomac is blockaded. So it is ; but it is of no 
practical disadvantage. For all the purposes of supply, we are in com- 
munication with every part of the north. There are compensations, per- 
haps unknown to my colleague, for this seeming disadvantage. Would 
that he would exercise his faith in some things inscrutable to him. But 
is there no credit to be given for the retention of Maryland ; the rescue 
of the Virginia eastern shore ; the constant preparation and discipline of 
an army of one hundred thousand men here ? And all this with the late 
Secretary of War dabbling in slavery questions and trafficking in contracts. 
Western Virginia we have held against the hostility of the disloyal. Floyd 
has been compelled to decamp ; and from the mountains to the Ohio our 
right there is none to dispute. 

But, sir, although General McClellan has had charge of all these mat- 
ters, and is entitled to share their merit, it was not my purpose to paint a pic- 
ture of our successes. We have gained as yet no great bloody battle com- 
mensurate with the armies in the field. Indeed, sir, I would prefer that the 
war should be carried on and ended by bloodless tactics rather than by 
bloody carnage, if it were possible. I would leave as little hate as possi- 
ble as the legacy of this conflict. If it were possible to close this Avar by 
the melting away or capitulation of the Confederate army, the country 
would prefer it ; General McClellan is not making this a war of ven- 
geance, but a war for the restoration of the Union. To this end he has, 
by his comprehensive energy, seized the coast from Ship Island to Fort- 
ress Monroe. There is no example in history of a sea coast so extensive, 
and a country of such area, surrounded and closed in by such a superior 
force, as is the rebellious part of our land. As the curtain lifts and this 
procession of facts transpire, we shall see the Union element of the South 
dUating and emerging from its despondency. We shall see the loyal men 
coming forth and gladly seizing the musket to rally to the old flag. 



230 EIGHT YEAE8 m CONGEESS. 

The great mistake on tlie part of these military fledglings, who criticize 
the conduct of the war, is, that they habitually underrate the extent and 
strength of the rebellion, just as they underrated and contemned the al- 
leged or fancied grievances of the South and their hold on the southern 
mind. I venture to say that this is the capital delinquency of the admin- 
istration, if they have been delinquent. Had they realized the fact " that 
a considerable body of insurgents had risen against the sovereign," which 
Vattel alleges is the test of a civil war, with all its appurtenances of a hu- 
mane code of warfare, the exchange of prisoners, &c., we might have had 
less difficulty and more honor in the conduct of this immense ordeal by 
battle. Those who do not recognize the fact of the immensity of this re- 
bellion will find at every step difficulties about belligerent rights on sea 
and land, and inhumanities V7hich would sicken the heart of a savage. 
We must learn by experience, if not a ■priori. Even my colleague, with 
his Bull Run retreat, is yet in his nonage. He must resort to the Baco- 
nian system of induction, and by experience learn, and begin to learn 
by being a " child in arms." [Laughter.] In surveying this grand field 
of action, from this capital to Santa Fe, he makes the mistake which the 
savant made when he supposed the moon annihilated, because an animal- 
cule had crept over the disc of his telescope and obscured the view. Let 
him take another glass and clear his vision. 

This presumptuous dictation to our generals is only a small illustration 
of what we see here in a larger measure, when gentlemen undertake to 
interpret the inscrutable designs of Providence to sustain their finite views. 

These political " cuckoos, who breed in the nest of another trade," 
these civilians, who go on chirping about war as if they were trained to it, 
when, in truth, they are only trained in the political convention and the 
talk of Congressional Globes, cannot apprehend that this revolution, which 
is the work of years and the movement of millions, is any thing more than 
a little derangement of the political machine, which will regulate itself by 
some political compensation, or some act of revengeful confiscation ; when, 
in truth, it can hardly be corrected without breaking the machine, or at 
least retarding its motion. It is so stupendous, sir, that it can only be 
likened to the ocean, which lifts itself up under a darkened sky and amid 
rolling thunder, and resists the exercise of any thing short of Supreme 
power with an elemental force that defies all the little expedients of carp- 
ing man. 

These complaints about the war are getting as common in the press 
and the House as they were before they produced the Bull Run disaster. 
A few of these impatient people then learned a lesson from their incautious 
impulsiveness ; but here we have it again. They belong to that class 
of skeptics who take every thing incomprehensible to their feeble sight as 
unknown and non-existent. They cannot see McClellan doing any thing ; 
therefore he does nothing. They are not partners in his confidence ; 
therefore he does wrong. He has not rushed about in wild theatric style ; 
therefore he is unfit. He has no retinue, no laced and gilded supernume- 
raries, no blare of trumpet and boom of guns to announce himself here and 
there. He has no elan, no dash, no plumed nonsense ; therefore the pub- 
lic faith in him must be sapped. Most of ail, he regards this as a great 
war for the Union and the Constituiiou, for the salvation of the white 



CrviL WAR. 231 

man's free government of America ; and because he does not play General 
Phelps in proclamations, or General Fremont in deeds of manumission, he 
is abused and maligned. 

Who are those that thus question McClellan's ability? Did they see 
and understand his masterly strategy in Western Virginia, the fame of 
which is the pride of the western soldiery ? Do they know the calm con- 
fidence and meritorious patience with which he now pursues his schemes 
by sea and land, by river and road, grouping whole sections in his com- 
prehensive combinations of strategy, and striving, Avithout irritating and 
inconsequential skirmishing, to end the war by " a sharp, though it may 
be a desperate struggle," and thus restore the Union? He has pledged 
himself to the President that if he live, and be allowed to carry out in 
action what he has matured in design, we shall soon see our flag tri- 
umphant and the rebellion crushed. 

These ready military critics have not even the militia training, which 
was so important years ago, to make them experts. A former colleague 
of ours, in the days of 1840, when the campaigns of General Harrison 
were discussed by a brigadier-general of the Michigan militia, with gro- 
tesque humor held up to the ridicuh; of the American Congi-ess the pecu- 
liar military studies by which the member from Michigan was fitted to 
the subtle criticisms on strategy, and the careful reviews of battles. He 
ventured to believe that the same militia general might have studied the 
title page of Baron Steuben enough to know that the rear rank stands 
right behind the front. [Laughter.] Besides, the critic on that occasion 
had the fortune to have been in the toils, privations, sacrifices, and 
bloody scenes through which a militia officer in time of peace was sure 
to p^ss. It is long since I read that graphic picture of a muster day in 
the West, touched by the tints of Corwin's facile humor. The troops in 
motion ! the corn-stalks, umbrellas, hoe and axe handles, and other like 
deadly implements of war overshadowing all the field, when lo ! the 
leader of the host approaches ! Far off his coming shines. I need not 
describe his horse, the rising cloud, the rain, the retreat, the remorseless 
fury with Avhich the watermelons are slaughtered, and the whisky drank 
in a neighboring grocery. [Laughter.] If with such experiences the 
member from Michigan was regarded then as the prince of military 
critics, what shall we say now of my sainted colleague, whose gentle life 
has been passed in the green pastures by the still waters of peace, and 
whose every prospect was the millennium, in which the lion and the lamb 
should lie down together, and the little child should lead them. Oh ! 
how it jars to hear the voice so often raised in benediction and prayer, 
and tuned to the sweet accents of love and mercy, 

" Splitting with tremendous sounds our ears asunder, 
With gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder." [Laughter.] 

If a militia general was so well fitted for the task of criticism on war, 
a fortiori, what heed shall we not pay to my reverend colleague, whose 
only experience has been that of a Bull Run retreat. Such critics ought 
at least to know a spear from a pruning-hook, or a sword from a plough- 
share. They ought at least to tell an ambvdance from a caisson. They 
ought to bite a cartridge without biting their tongue. The only fuse 



232 EIGHT YEAICS IN CONGRESS. 

tliey know of is a political fusion ; they caa deploy around a convention 
or caucus, and fire theii' political thunder from the batteries of a dema- 
gogue, masked with the negro. If they fired a gun and should hit, they 
Avould do it as did Winkle when he killed the rook — he shut his eyes 
and blazed away in timid despair. My colleague is one of those whose 
politics and prayers have ever been to be delivered from the men of war. 
In times past he has thought more of Saint Peter than of saltpeter. When 
the Mexican war was declared, the class to which he belongs echoed 
Sumner's " True Grandeur of Nations," when he said " there was no war 
which was not dishonorable, and no peace which was not honorable," 
They sang the ironical Yankee slang of Hosea Bigelow to the recruiting 
sergeant of Colonel Caleb Cushing : 

" Fife away, you fifiu' feller, 
You may life till you are yeller, 
'Fore you get a hold of me." 

There, away down in some New England village, " they kind o' thought 
Christ went agin war and pillage, and that eppyletts warn't the best mark 
of a saint." Now, they are Avilling to swear '' that the apostles were rig- 
ged out in their swallow-tail coats, an' marched round in front of a drum 
and fife." Now they agree to the ironical verse : 

" John P. 
Robinson — he 
Says they didn't know every thing down in Judee." 

These men whose lives have been dedicated to considering the horrors 
of war and slavery, and whose consciences were very tender about the 
down-trodden Avhen they wanted votes, now undertake, by congressional 
committees, declarations, and military diatribes here, to set squadrons in 
the field, and to show McClellan how he is not doing it, or how he might 
do it with the aid of armed blacks so bravely and all at once. Not satis- 
fied with the President of their choice ; not content with that which they 
voted in the Crittenden resolutions as the object to which the war should 
be devoted ; not happy in the progress of a campaign which, so far as 
General McClellan is concerned, has been comparatively successful, and 
certainly without blunders, they want a movement " at all hazards," even 
if it moves the country and the Government to secession, dictatorship, 
chaos, or destruction. Such political dyspeptics and martial zanies ought 
to be sent home to teach boarding school misses the doctrines that brought 
many members here — the beauty of John Brown's life, and the glory of 
his death. 

Judging by the remarks made here, one would infer that these gentle- 
men were all ready to receive and provide for the four millions of blacks 
who are to be freed by the war power ; that the corn bread and fat pork 
were all pi-ovided for tlie jubilee of freedom. But where will they get the 
food, or where will they fix the locus in quo for the festive scene? In 
Kentucky? — Ohio? Some of our soldiers, who have just fought so nobly 
under General Thomas, have written complaints that they get clothes 
through which they can put their fingers, and chicory for coffee. We 
do not even feed decently our white braves ; but these gentlemen, who 
reason so lunaticly, think that there is some peculiar virtue in a colored 



CIVIL WAK. 233 

child or woman, and that the Lord somehow will provide for thorn as he 
did for Elijah with the ravens. 

Why, do not these extreme gentlemen know that they are, in some 
part, responsible for this war? Does my colleague from Cleveland [Mr. 
Riddle] want me to prove it by his own speech ? They are only fight- 
ing what we advised them would come by their action. We Democrats, 
with McClellan at om* head, are now helping them ; and how are we met 
by these ingrates ? No, they are not fighting it ; but they think they are 
moving the wheels, when they only sit on the axle and buzz their mur- 
murs about McClellan and the forces which move the chariot of war. 
What good comes of this sort of debate here and now? Talk about milk- 
ing a he-goat in a sieve, and it is sense to this. There is a little smack 
of propriety in this latter idea ; but what can we say of this exhibition in 
a deliberative body, whose only duty it is to increase the army and the rev- 
enue, discussing the disposition of the slaves before we get them, and 
the movements of General McClellan, with the blankest incapacity to 
understand them. It is too ridiculous for serious controversy. It can 
only be ridiculed. Yet we have civil warriors, whose only fight is logo- 
maclij, barking at General McClellan ; and for what ? Because he does not 
proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof. 
All, there is the trouble ! Can you wonder that Wendell Pliillips, whose 
speeches are hailed so rapturously by this class, declared that he should 
deplore a victory by McClellan, because the sore would be salved over, 
and it would only be the victory of a slave Union ; and tliat he thanked 
Beauregard for marshalling his army before Washington, because it con- 
ferred upon Congress the constitutional power to abolish slavery? Nor 
would I wonder to see my colleague from the Cleveland district, who 
lectured us on our duty to the Union upon the slavery question, rehearsing 
again his contempt for the Union, which he expressed in his printed 
speech made at Cleveland on the day of John Brown's obsequies, when 
he said that no pm-er spirit than John Brown's had ever entered Paradise 
for the past thousand years ; and that he woidd rend the Union to destroy 
slavery, though hedged round by the triple bars of the national compact. 

I did intend, Mr. Chairman, to review some of the bills introduced 
here for confiscation and emancipation, and to discuss their feasibility and 
constitutionality. But I am glad to announce to the country that there is 
no hope of such suicidal legislation passing the present Congress. That 
announcement, which the opinions here justify, will give relief to our 
Ai'my and to the Union men everywhere. One of the bills of this black 
batch pretends to strike ovit the State of Florida. This bill has the pa- 
ternity of my colleague [Mr. Gurley]. It is a part of his military plan. 
While striking for the Union and the flag, with every star on its folds, he 
would blot out the Statehood of Florida. He would have its everglades 
aud swamps devoted to the business of ifegro apprenticeship, with the 
Federal agents as taskmasters, and the Republic as a cotton producer and 
speculator. Here is the spot where my colleague would imparadisc the 
African. He would have a Federal master watch the negro apprentice, 
and see to it that he produced a living from that soil, where dying is so 
much easier. He would have us drop down the little pickaninnies amidst 
the haunts of the alligator. He thinks he sees here an opening for the 



234: EIGHT TEAES EST CONGEESS. 

rising generation of colored children ; knowing, as my colleague does, .| 
that they will all be saved in the other world, he is willing to risk their : 
sudden disappearance here. I can well imagine the holy horror which i 
will pervade the infantile Afri<ian mind when it comes to understand the | 
confiscating character of my colleague's bill. I can well understand how t 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Campbell] must have startled L 
the people of his State by his proposition to hang all the public plun- - 
dercrs, and thus depopulate so terribly his own State. But that was i| 
humanity compared to this scheme of my colleague, which has only a i 
parallel in Dean Swift's plan to get rid of Irish children by eating them. ., 
Suicidal absurdity can no further go than this ' AU svich schemes are in t 
derogation of our whole system of polity. Their authors seem bent on i 
prying away mountains of granite with levers of straw ! 

Such schemes as are here discussed will do no good to the blacks nor • 
the whites, unless a scheme of forced expatriation be at once started ; and I 
that is attended with formidable obstacles. The North will become in i 
turn the worse than masters of the slaves. For very self-protection and ! 
to prevent such a ruinous and adulterous mixture of society, the North i 
will rise to drive the free blacks from their soil. Interest, which is > 
stronger in society, in the end, than philanthropy, will issue its edict of 
expatriation, and no good will accrue to the black or white. If you would ! 
barbarize the war, undignify its object, and, indeed, make it a failure in < 
every sense, you may follow the impracticable schemes of New England I 
politics, and their neophytes in the country. These emancipation schemes ■ 
will divide the North, and create new dissension and rebellion in the bor- 
der States. They will paralyze the efforts of the army, and make cold 
and indifferent the now ardent and anxious friends of the Union. This 
division of the North now, when all are united by State legislation and 
Federal action to defend our flag and sovereignty, would tend to destroy 
the hope which has buoyed us in this great conflict. 

It would be an act of fraud on the soldiers and officers of the grand 
Army of the Ilepublic. They were called out by a proclamation of the 
3d of May, which was in harmony with the action of Congi-ess. The 
Crittenden resolutions were an explicit avowal of the only and legitimate 
object of this Avar. (House Journal of last session, p. 129.) 

To divert it now into a war against the institution of slavery will be 
to make it the " violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle " which the 
President fears. Besides, it would make it a gigantic swindle upon the 
people, upon our votes for taxes, and upon the soldiers who imperil their 
lives in defence of the Union and its authority. This was not the under- 
standing of a large party in this country who rallied at the call of Douglas. 
He most distinctly disavowed such an object. He would not by a Federal 
army, any more than by a Federal Congress, interfere with State laws 
and institutions. So he declared over and over again. This forum is no 
place for its discussion, much less for its enactment. If the State Legis- 
latures, in their sovereign Avill, choose to do this, it is for them, not for us. 
"We have no right ; and it is none of our business to make the Federal 
Government a moral reform society. This attempt has broken the Union ; 
and the continuance of the effort may widen the breach until the separa- 
tion is everlasting. As most of our ills come by slavery discussions and 



I CIVIL WAE. 235 

Jaws, why may we not now pause ? Why do not gentlemen on the other 
'side, who have now before them the results of this most troublesome agi- 
nation, cease their clamor? Those who keep it up are disunionists. 
Their talk is treason. Tliey deserve a traitor's fate as much as Davis or 
Wigfiall. Is it not enough that a million of men are employed in violence 
and bloodshed ; not enough that our trade and commerce are paralyzed ; 
that our revenue has fallen off o'-er $32,000,000 ; that by 1863 our 
national debt, as estimated by Mr. Chase, will be $897,322,802 ; not 
enough that we are to pledge $150,000,000 this year of taxation to meet 
interest and expenses ; not enough that ray own State pays one-tenth of 
this ; is it not enough that our currency is to be vitiated, and bankruptcy 
to overwhelm us ; not enough that our highways are closed, our flag in- 
sulted, our sovereignty derided, our whole nationality in peril ; not enough 
that a dictator is openly threatened ; not enough that it is declared here 
that the Constitution shall be overslaughed, on the plea of necessity ; that 
all its limitations shall be overleaped, ruthlessly and aimlessly? Are we 
to have added the horror of an endless war of hate ; the hopelessness of all 
reconciliation ; the prospect and fact of a divided North ; the burdens of 
a taxation only equalled by the monarchies of Europe ? Heaven forbid ! 
If God in his mercy would strike down, not only politically but physically, 
the marplots who are warring on their own Administration and Govern- 
ment, it would indeed be a blessing compared with this prospect. 
: We may differ here about our interior government. We may have 
lour parties of Administration and opposition. These differences of opin- 
ion are privileges of constitutional sanction and individual conscience. 
Matters may go on in our Government as to which we may have a sad 
and painful reticence, and as to which we may withhold our denunciation 
out of regard to the common weal. Even patriotism may for a time be 
silent in the eclipses of a mismanaged administration of a good Govern- 
ment. The national feeling may still be paramount, and all may go well. 
Thousands of our people now regard with dampened spii'it and sad silence 
the condition of our country ; and they are almost dismayed by our 
terrible present and stdl unpropitious future ; yet not altogether despair- 
ing, but seeking in the unity of the people, yet loyal, the hope of restora- 
tion. They will be patient in paying taxes, in trusting our commanders 
and rulers, in giving their sons to the war and their daughters to the la- 
bors of beneficence. 

But what will become of this sad yet undismayed patriotism, if the 
hopes of Union are to be quenched by this persistent and unreasoning 
fanaticism? Are not such schemes fraught Avith the very vital and 
permanent principle of mischief? If so, will not the very essence of 
national existence be irrecoverably lost by their success ? We shall lose 
our place among the nations, our relative importance on the globe, our 
physical independence, our weight in the equilibrium of powers, our 
frontiers, alliances, and geography. Tiiese make up the immortality of a 
nation. They are above the changes of administration and outlive dy- 
nasties. He who remains silent when such interests are at stake is 
treacherous to his land and to his God. 

; It is in this most vital point that these movements here in Congress, 
iWhich are the continuation of contumacious fanaticism, will do theii* mis- 



236 



EIGHT TEAKS EST CONGRESS. 



cliief. To succeed in their bad schemes these fanatics undermine the youn| 
general in command, deride the movements of the army, create impatience 
distrust, and coldness, and will rejoice in our ruin. On behalf of the ta 
payer, the soldier, the citizen, the patriot, the section I represent, and th| 
very physical and moral relations of our Government, I protest agains 
that dangerous and horrible malversation of our Congi-essional office 
•which would usurp the power of the States over their own institutions 
seek through the army the further disruption of the Government, destrojj 
the last vestiges of our confederation, and stop its magnificent caree;| 
among the nations. 

EMANCIPATION AND ITS RESULTS. 

AMBIGUOUS POLICY EXTREME MEN — CONFISCATION AND KINDRED MEASURES POLICE RIGB 

OF STATES OYER THE NEGRO IMMIGRATION AND SUFFRAGE FREE NEGROES AND THEI 

COLONIES. 

Delivered June Qth, 1862. 

Mr. Speaker : At the beginning of our civil conflict this HougJ 
passed almost unanimously a resolution offered by the gentleman from KenI 
tacky [Mr. Crittenden] as to the character of the war. It was a pledgJ 
that the war should not be waged in hostility to the institutions of any of 
the States. On the faith of that pledge men and money were voted. Since! 
then that pledge has been broken both in this House and out of it. 

Sir, I have watched with anxiety the conduct of this House. No heejl 
is given here to the warning of loyal Union men from slave States 
Their advice is met with the cry, " Oh, they are for slavery ; and no pr^ 
slavery man can be loyal." No attention is paid to old-time political 
opponents whose friends are the majority in the field. For aiding to pre-l 
serve the Union, which they have been taught by their party canons to re-l 
vere, they are treated to taunts and slander. 

Measures like those from Massachusetts, which would hold States asl 
conquered fiefs ; Avhich would recognize republics abroad because thejl 
are black ; Avhich would create equality of black and white, in carrying 
the mails, such as passed the Senate ; which, like the acts of confiscatioi 
and emancipation here urged, are to prematurely free the whole or a por-j 
tion of the black population; all these measores, sir, are^subversive ofl 
the institutions of tlic States, and have created apprehension and distrustJ 

Before the President can crush this revolt, he must reassure and reani-l 
mate the public mind. He has already done well in crushing the FremonlT 
and Hunter proclamations. He has done well in protecting Genera 
McCk'lhm from the fanatics, who hungered for his overthrow. He has 
done well in many other respects from which I would not detract by anj 
hostile criticism now. I Avould sustain my country and its constitutioi 
even if I were not on oath so to do. It is in this spirit that I wish that 
there were no ambiguity in our public counsels. This war can have no 
end until the rresident clears away all un(;ertaihty. The more definitel 
the object, the more firm wiU the Government be in asserting it. Its gen,-^ 



ClYIL WAE. 237 

erals may conquer, but cannot hold. It may by physical force subdue, 
but it must do more to reinstate public confidence. It must control the 
civil and moral elements, by whose influence alone can the subdued be 
reconciled. I am anxious to believe that the President means right. 
But of the men who control this Congress I speak plainly. They pull 
down ; they do not build up. They have an activity in destroying ; 
nothing of the genius of man in constructing. Salvation is not their forte. 
It is their conduct Avhich creates ambiguity. 

There is something needed in making successful civil war besides rais- 
1 ing money and armies. You must keep up the confidence and spirit of 
the people. It must not only be animated by a noble passion at the out- 
set, but it must be sustained by confidence in the cause. . You dispirit the 
army and destroy its power, if you give forth an uncertain sound. Is 
there a member here Avho dare say that Ohio troops will fight successfully 
or fight at all, if the result shall be the flight and movement of the black 
race by millions northward to their own State ? Our soldiers will endure 
great sacrifices, if they think that they are planting the flag over States 
where it has been shamelessly dishonored, and if they believe that the 
United States, as they have bee'n made by our Constitution and constel- 
lated by time, are to be again enstarred in full brilliancy. But when you 
make men homeless — when you crape the doors and bedew the eyes of the 
hiTcaved — when bloody calamity darkens the hearth and heavy taxes op- 
inoss labor, there must be no ambiguity of policy. You wish to put down 
iliis rebellion ; yet you despise the counsels of the Union men of the 
Sijuth, who tell you that your anti-slavery crusade adds to the rebel army 
day after day thousands of soldiers and to the southern treasury millions 
of money. You presume on their forbearance, not caring to know that 
theii- lips are often sealed here, because by denouncing you, the secession 
' element which is kept alive by your action in their States, will point to 
' then- denunciations of your conduct as a justification of the rebellion. You 
■will justify tliis rebellion to history, provided only your vengeance and 
■ your election are made sure. 

Sir, I fear and distrust much which I cannot, from motives of prudence 
and patriotism, utter. Is it the policy here, as it would seem to be, to 
'. force the Union men South into some rash expression or act, by such proc- 
lamations as Hunter's, and such legislation as we have had ; and then to 
' charge this rashness as an excuse for converting the war into a St. Do- 
mingo insurrection, turning the South into one utter desolation? Is it in 
anticipation of this, that we have arms for negroes sent to South Carolina 
and Louisiana? We can get no information on these subjects, though we 
['strive for it. Are we to be deceived by the prevarication of this Congress 
in regard to extreme measures? In the mean time are these extreme 
measures to be taken as the army advances with its triumphant flag? In 
(the name of God, is no man's hand to be raised to retard the downward, 
^i desperate course of these extreme men ? Will not the President at once 
l| leap to fill the niche in history, pointed out to him by my friend from 
Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] ? He has done so many noble acts, in spite 
of the lashings of his friends, will he not change this equivocal situation, 
and give us reassurance in our doubt and trouble, like that wdiicli dictated 
the Crittenden resolve? Such assurance would make the coimtry ring 



238 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

with liis praises. It would make Qur taxation light, our duty clear, an« 
our patriotism resplendent heyond all that is written in the annals of man 

I trace the murmurs of discontent which come to us from army aiw 
people, to the alUance between Republicans and Abolitionists. That alii 
ance may be natural, but it is not patriotic. The Philadelphia platfom 
of no more slave States, and Republicanism with its Chicago dogma ol 
no more slave territory, may be innocent in intention, but allied witi| 
Abolitionism, with its raids and war upon slavery everywhere and its did 
fiance of the Constitution, become crime. Is this alliance the forerunna 
of that perfect Union when " Liberty shall be proclaimed throughout al 
the land and to all the inhabitants thereof " ? Is it the dawn of that mil 
lennial day which shall reflect back the sabre, the musket, and the toi'ch h 
the hands of the enfranchised African, already urged and voted for b; 
thirty members in this House? We want no more poetry about strikitij 
off chains and bidding the oppressed go. Plain people Avant to knov 
whether the chains will not be put upon white limbs ; and whither th^ 
oppressed are to go. If the industry of the North is to be fettered witl 
their support ; if they are to go to Ohio and the North, we want to kno-v 
it. Nay, we want, if we can, to stop it. As I am anxious to see ou 
country restored to its former condition, I would protest against thi 
ambiguous policy. I have seen a year of cruel distrust of our general 
because tliey were faithful to our Constitution and the Union. I hav 
seen in and out of this House the thieves of character assailing good me: 
because such men had a policy not based on visions of African freedom 
The blood of our brave soldiers flows like Avater in aid of a holy cause 
It would be a criminal silence for me to forbear to characterize this cruel 
fraudulent change of that holy cause, into such dangerous and suicidi 
schemes. 

Gentlemen on the other side of this chamber have been determined t 
discuss the causes of this rebellion. One would have supposed that prc'l; 
dence on that theme would have sealed them into silence. Slavery, thejl; 
say, is the only cause, and their logic is, eradicate the cause, and the wa 
will stop. Slavery is the occasion, but not the cause. Slavery ha 
existed for nearly seventy years, and the United States prospered in it 
unity. Slavery agitation, North and South, is the cause, and it has bee 
carried on by both abolition and secession. It takes two millstones 
grind the grist. From the beginning of secession I denounced it. I b( 
lieve, in view of all its consequences, that it is the worst crime since th 
scene on Calvary. But, sir, I am at as great a loss hoAV to apportion th 
guilt between secession and the abolition which begat it, as I Avould be t 
apportion the guilt of the crucifixion between Judas and the Roman soldiers 
If thei-e is any difference, it is in favor of the bold parricide, and against th 
insidious betrayer. And now, as the climax of this abolitionism, we fin 
the Governor of Massachusetts, when called on to send more troops to th 
aid of the Government, laying down conditions — conditions to his loyaltj 
He is willing for his people to crowd the roads with recruits, if only th 
blacks are to be freed by the war, and Hunter's proclamation is left ur 
touched by the President. But if this be not done, it will be a heavi 
draft on the patriotism of Massachusetts. If the blacks are to be freed 
if slavery is to be uprooted. Shakespeare says : " Your if is a gres 



CIVIL WAK. 239 

peacemaker." This abolition " if" sir, is an infamous traitor. I could 
name members on the other side of the House Avho, though few in num- 
ber, have kept their faith without ambiguity. But the body of them are 
led by another class of unmistakable hue, who are ready to follow the 
conditional loyalty of the Massachusetts Governor, and to free the ne- 
groes, regardless of constitutional limitations and consequences. 

These destructives, whatever they profess, when they come to vote, 
like the hues in a prism, melt imperceptibly into each other. Tliou^-h we 
imagine that we see a difference between them, yet altogether they make 
up that light which is to guide us in our troubles. God help us when 
such light leads ! Such friends are like those in the rebel army Avho ap- 
proach our soldiers with white tlags, crying " Don't fire ! we are Union 
men ; don't fire ! " and at the very moment of our confidence, they inflict 
their deadly treachery upon our flag ! 

But it is ever thus. History shows it. Extreitie men drag the moder- 
ate men with them. ;' The devil, it is said, liolds his own by a hair. He 
has entered into this majority as he entered into the swine ; and they will, 
by diabolic impulse, be driven at last into the sea. At last — but when is 
that time to come? When the country is ruined? Must these northern 
fanatics be sated with negroes, taxes, and blood, with division north and 
devastation south and peril to constitutional liberty everywhere, before re- 
lief shall come ? They will not halt until their darling schemes are con- 
summated. History tells us that such zealots do not and cannot go back- 
ward. Robespierre, the gentle judge at Arras, in 1783, resigned rather 
than condemn a criminal to death. In ten years after, filled with the en- 
thusiasm of Rousseau, he claimed for the blacks in the French colonies a 
participation in poUtical rights, and exclaimed, not unlike members here, 
" Let the colonies perish, rather than a principle ! " But he Avas the same 
> Robespierre who led the Jacobins to demand the King's head in 1792, 
who established the reign of terror, and whose motto was, " that to live 
. was a crime." He could take no step backward. Onward, onwai-d from 
\ excess to excess, until his name became the obloquy of the world. Only 
l' his own death, by the same terrorism, ended his terrible rule. The same 
' result took place at Rome, in the time of Gracchus. It is so everywhere 
, when passion is driven to excess. Our only safety now lies in moderate 
I and patriotic counsels, not rash and vindictive action. Lihertatem in me 
ji requiro, non in pertiiiacia, sed quddam moderatione positam putabo. Mr. 
ij Speaker, do not think I overstate these perils from extreme men. Have 
^t not our best statesmen, like Clay and Douglas, warned us of this time? 
Does not the venerable statesman of Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] con- 
^jtinue to warn — in vain? Your records are crowded with remonstrances 
I of the great and good against this sectional warfare to uproot a social sys- 
\. tem, whose result wiU be a w' ar of ruin. I appeal to you now, as I did 

!_ more than a year ago to the extreme men of the South, to halt, to con- 
I sider, before it is entirely too late. 

i One thing is sure, that out of all this ambiguity, the tendency of legis- 
lative action here is to free the slaves of the South and hurl them in hordes 
upon the North. Events, says Phillips, are grinding out the freedom of 

(the negro ; and these abolition bills are events. The confiscation bill 
, passed last week, and the emancipation bill resurrected by a majority of 



240 EIGHT YEAE8 IN CONGRESS, 

four after its temporary death, have this meaning. They will not aid to 
pay the expenses of the war. That part of the title of the confiscation 
bill wliich so affirms is a hypocritical falsehood. The gentleman from 
Missouri [Mr. Phelps] has demonstrated that. Even Wendell Phillips 
laughs at such bills. " You might as well," he says, " call upon the 
poorhouse to pay the expenses of the town. Take away the slaves, 
and they have not enough left to pay one month's expenses of the war." ' 
The " Tribune" sneers at such confiscations, and with more than its usual 
sense, when it says, that they amount to nothing ; that you must first get 
the land and the negroes, and that then the expenses of confiscation and 
the general amnesty which must follow to aU but the leaders, will render 
your confiscation valueless. 

Such bills are not constitutional. That was shown conclusively by 
the learned jurist [Mr. Thomas] from Massachusetts, as Avell as by the 
Senators from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan] and Vermont [Mr. Collamek]. 
They contravene the first and third articles of the Constitution : 

" No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed." 

" The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury ; and such 
trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have been committed ; but when 
not committed within any State, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress 
may by law have directed." 

" Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or 
in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." 

" No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to 
the same overt act, or on confession in open court." 

" The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attain- 
der of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the 
person attainted." 

They contravene the following provisions, among the amendments of 
the Constitution : 

" Article the Fifth. No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise 
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases 
arising in the land and naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service, in time of 
war and public danger ; nor shall any person be subject, for the same offence, to be twice 
put in jeopardy of life or limb ; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a wit- 
ness against himself, nor to be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process 
of law ; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. 

"Article the Sixth. In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right 
to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the 
crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by 
law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation ; to be confronted with 
the witnesses against him ; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his 
favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence." 

If, when swearing to sustain these clauses of the Constitution, Ave have 
not taken"" dicers' oaths," we must refuse all legislation which attaints 
any one for treason. We can declare the punishment of treason, to be 
meted out by " due process of law " in the proper tribunals. We have 
already done so. It is death. But for every crime there must be trial 
and conviction. It is the very essence of despotism to confiscate without 
such legal inii)eachment. Against such legislative tyranny the authors of 
our Constitution framed express clauses. They did it, as Judge Story 
Bays (2 tSion/s Commentaries, § 1344), to guard against the injus- 
tice and iniquity which England inflicted " in times of rebellion or of j 



;ft 



CrVTL WAR. 241 

gross subserviency to the crown, or of violent political excitements — 
periods in which all nations are most liable (as well the free as the 
enslaved) to forget their duties and to trample upon the rights and liberties 
of others." The sentiment of the accomplished men of Congress being 
against these bills as unconstitutional, resort was next had to the law of 
nations to justify them. Members, who a year ago claimed that this 
rebellion was not a civil war, are now quick to iind out that it is so, when 
it will answer the purposes of vengeance and emancipation. The Secre- 
tary of War, in his order of April 9, 1862, expressly recognized the rebel- 
lion as a " civil war." When, a year ago, I embodied the doctrine, that 
from the formidable character and number of the insurgents, the laws of 
civil war, as between belligerent nations, ought to obtain, copied though 
my resolution was from Vattel himself, gentlemen inconsiderately voted 
it down. Vattel (Book 3, chap. 13, § 295) and other authoritative pub- 
licists declare what is a public war. 

" The war between the two parties stands on the same ground, in every respect, as a 
public war between two different nations. They decide their quarrel by arms, as two dif- 
ferent nations would do. The obUgation to observe the common laws of war toward each 
other is, therefore, absolute." 

Since then flags of truce, exchange of prisoners, and other rules of 
civilized warfare have been practiced by our Government. England and 
France have recognized this relation. Now, if the laws of war as be- 
tween nations prevail in this contest, as gentlemen now argue, then I 
point to the humane code that private property on land shall not be confis- 
cated, except it be contraband of war. That slaves are contraband when 
used on fortifications, and are confiscate, is no question now, since Con- 
gress has enacted a law making each slave so used confiscate to the State. 
But if by the laws of the States slaves are personal property, as the courts 
have decided, then the law of nations reaches them, and they are not con- 
fiscate. That law of nations has no exceptions but contraband. It is so 
admitted by all. America at least has acted on it. Franklin, in hia 
treaty with Prussia ; Washington, in his letter to Rochambeau ; Hamil- 
ton, Jefferson, Clay, John Quincy Adams, Pierce, Marcy, Lincoln, and 
Seward, have taken it for granted. It is too late to question it. They 
sought to extend it, in the interest of humanity, from the land to the sea. 
I have, this session, in a speech on neutral maritime rights, elucidated this 
doctrine and its history. I have shown that this was the object of the 
Paris conference of 1856, and of the Marcy amendment proposed to the 
great maritime powers. To this doctrine the assent of forty-six powers 
was given, at the request of France. And this was the object of Mr. 
Dayton, and Mr. Adams, and our other European ministers last summer, 
when, by Mr. Seward's instruction and under President Lincoln's direction, 
our nation sought to have aU private property, not contraband of war, 
munitions de guerre^ free from seizure and confiscation by the cruisers and 
privateers of belligerents at sea, as it was already thus free upon land. I 
therefore boldly affirm that this Administration, to its lasting honor, is not 
only committed to this doctrine, but has favored its extension from the 
land to the sea. The great men of Europe and of this country have 
agreed to that doctrine. It was urged to soften the horrors of war, to 
save mankind from cruel and unjust violence, to limit war and its horroi'8 
16 



242 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

to the combatants, to reduce the conflict to a duello between armies, and 
to save the sea, as the laud was already saved by law, from being the 
theatre of cruel, predatory, and barbarous practices. The reason urged 
for this doctrine is, that it enables men to make peace, lasting and frater- 
nal, unembittered by cruelties to helpless women and children, to non- 
combatants, and men of productive industry and peaceful occupations in 
private life. It is the doctrine of the Saviour of mankind. 

The wise men of this Congress have urged, upon similar principles, 
that all laws of vengeance, confiscation, and emancipation will only pi*o- 
long and stimulate the rebellion, postpone peace, and frustrate the reas- 
sertion of Federal authority. While I would punish the rebel leaders for 
treason ; while I would do it without vengeance, in the name and majesty 
of the Republic which they have tried to dispart and destroy, I would 
not make laws, in the very agony of the strife, whose effect will be to 
strengthen treason, to prolong the contest, and destroy all hopes of a 
reunion. 

But, sir, my opposition to such bills proceeds mainly from other and 
more conclusive reasoning. Granting that these bills are constitutional, 
and that they are according to the law of nations, a more momentous ques- 
tion arises. It is no less than the preservation of the people and society of 
the North. You free the slaves to punish treason ; you free the slaves 
because you hate slavery. But what if the pimishment falls upon the 
loyal North? Shall Ohio suffer because South Caroline I'ebels? Shall 
the North be destroyed or impaired in its progressive prosperity, by your 
projects of wholesale freedom of the slaves, because it will punish, crip- 
ple, or destroy slavery or the South ? 

It is beyond doubt that a large number of the four millions of slaves 
will be freed incidentally by the war. Already ten thousand are freed in 
South Carolina ; as many more in Virginia ; and perhaps as many more 
in the West. It has been computed that ah-eady some 70,000 blacks are 
freed by the war. I see it stated authoritatively that more contrabands 
followed Gen. Banks's retreat do^vn the Virginia Valley than his troops 
numbered. These are being scattered North, are becoming resident in 
this District and supported by the largesses of the Federal treasury. It is 
said that 18,000 rations are daily given out to negroes by our Govern- 
ment. This is but a small number of those who are freed, or to be freed 
by these bills. The mildest confiscation bill proposed will free not less 
than 700,000 slaves. The bill which is before us frees three millions, at 
least. The bills which receive the favor of the majority of the Republican 
party will free four millions. Nothing less will satisfy this Congress. 
That is now apparent. If you do not free all, say the extremists, your 
war is rose-water. If not all, no peace is possible. It may have been 
wrong to have held them in slavery. Is it right to set them free, to 
starve? What is to be done with them? This is the riddle, more dif- 
ficult than that of the Ethiopian Sphinx. Like that fabled monster, 
with the man's head and the lion's body, it has a puzzle, and we have no 
Qidipus to solve it. One gentleman proposes to free the slaves, appren- 
tice them awhile to raise money, and them colonize them. This scheme 
has its advocates. Regardless of constitutional restrictions, he would 
have us first free them, or as many as are owned by rebels, an4 buy as 



CIVIL WAE. 243 

many as are owned by loyal men, and then, by the money raised by ap- 
prenticeship, deport them to Mexico, South or Central America. What 
though it enslave the white labor of the North for a half century ! What 
though it divert the Federal Government into a grand master of appren- 
tices ! What though it cost millions ! What though it destroy the pro- 
ductive industry of a dozen States ! It would be a happy riddance at any 
price. Such is the argument. But another class say to this scheme : 
" No ; you have no right to send away against his will the African born 
here. You have no right to buy him. He is entitled to privileges equally 
with you, direct from the hand of his Heavenly Father, who gave him a 
charter to live and own himself." This side is championed by the gentle- 
man from Illinois [Mr, Lovejot]. Between these two charmers the 
simple black man stands, as a comic paper depictured him, Avith grinning 
mouth and hesitating mind, not knoAving which to choose. One of my 
colleagues, who speaks most nearly the sentiments of the majority here 
[Mr. Bingham], has met the question like a man, if not like a statesman. 
He denies tirst that the States have the right to pass laws forbidding the 
immigration of blacks within their borders. 

I will not spend much time, sir, to controvert this doctine. Such laws 
have existed in western States and in Ohio unchallenged. Judge Doug- 
las Avas x'ight when, in his contest Avith Mr, Lincoln, he maintained that 
these commonwealths Avere for white men. Aside from the question of 
policy, there is an admitted right in each State to make or unmake its 
citizenship, to declare Avho is and Avho is not entitled thereto. That will 
not be denied. When Minnesota came here for admission, that was set- 
tled. But my colleague seems to admit that political privileges, like that 
of suffrage, may be fixed by State laAvs. Indeed, the Supreme Court 
have decided that the State has the exclusive right so to do. If so, by 
what reason can a State deprive the black race of the right of suffrage, on 
which depend all laws, all protection, all assessment of taxes, all punish- 
ments, even the matter of life and death, and yet not have power to forbid 
such black race, as a dangerous element, from mingling with its popula- 
tion? The constitution of Illinois, just submitted to the people, denies 
to the negro the right of emigrating to, or ha\ing citizenship in that 
State. Hitherto the same prohibition has existed in Illinois and Indiana, 
and other Avestern States. In Virginia, as a police regulation, free ne- 
groes are forbidden to emigrate to that State. It was never disputed, 
never, until Oregon apph'ed for admission. Her constitution provided 
that no person of African descent, though free, and no Chinaman, should 
emigrate to that State, or should have the right of suffrage or hold prop- 
erty. In the Globe of the 35th Congress (p. 193 et seq.) the debate is 
reported. A Senator from Maine denied the right thus to exclude black 
men, who Avere citizens of his own State, by a decision of the Supreme 
Court of Maine. He held, as I suppose my colleague [Mr. Bingham] 
holds, that no one portion of the citizens of the United States can inter- 
fere with the rights of another portion of the citizens of the United States, 
and that negroes are citizens. In disregarding the decision of the Federal 
court against negro citizenship, I am at a loss to see what authority the 
Supreme Court of Maine, or the ipse dixit of my colleague, ought to 
have. But Avaiving that, it was ansAvered by a. Republican Senator from 



244 EIGHT TEAES IN" CONGEESS. 

Illinois [Mr. Trtjiubull], who denied that negroes ought to be placed 
on an equal footing in the States with white citizens. Judge Douglas, 
whose word is now so sacred where once it was so contemned, said : 

"As to the power of a State to exclude the negro population from her limits, I had 
hoped there was no dispute at this day. If Maine chooses to encourage a colored instead 
of a white population, it is her right to do so. These are matters which belong to the 
sovereignty of each State to decide for itself. Maine has decided one way, Illinois 
another. I thought that for several years we had recognized this doctrine completely." 

He might well have thought so, with the Kansas Topeka Constitution 
in his mind, which the Republicans had indorsed, and which made it the 
duty of the first Legislature to pass laws to prohibit the introduction of 
free negroes into Kansas. At the conclusion of the debate, it was gener- 
ally conceded that although members might, in their discretion, vote 
against Oregon on account of this prohibition of free negroes, still after a 
State was admitted, she had the full right to make what police regulations 
she pleased as to her population. Oregon was admitted with this consti- 
tution. No question has ever been raised, either in the courts of that 
State or the United States, as to the legality of her prohibition. I know 
that my colleague argued against the exclusion of negroes from Oregon 
as unconstitutional, inhuman, and atrocious. He argued the question 
ably. He distinguished between the conventional right of suffrage and the 
natural right of locomotion and emigration. He is consistent to-day with 
his record, then ; but in my opinion consistently Avrong. It never was 
intended, and it is not so written in the Constitution, that the States should 
give up the right to regulate the character of their immigration. If it 
were not so, there could be no safety to property, liberty, or life, under 
State institutions. A community of Mormons or Thugs might take pos- 
session of a State, and there would be no remedy. This reserved right 
for self-protection to the State has never been given up, nor can the dele- 
gation of this power be inferred from any general phrase in the instrument 
like that which declares that " the citizens of each State shall be entitled 
to aU the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States." If it 
were inferrible, we might then conclude that the Supreme Court of the 
United States were wrong in deciding that negroes were not citizens. 
But history and precedent show that the Supreme Court were right ; and 
although they decided it in the Dred Scott case, no one contends that this 
part of that decision was coram non judice. It is authoritative upon all 
citizens. 

The right and power to exclude Africans from the States North being 
compatible with our system of State sovereignty and Federal supremacy, 
I assert that it is impolitic, dangerous, degrading, and unjust to the white 
men of Ohio and of the North, to allow such immigration. By the census 
of 18G0, in Ohio, we have 36,225 colored persons out of a population of 
2,339,5.'J9. As a general thing, they are vicious, indolent, and improvi- 
dent. They number, as yet, one black to about sixty-three whites ; but 
their ratio of increase, during the last ten years, has been 43.30 per cent., 
while that of tlie white increase is only 17.82 per cent. . About one-tenth 
of our convicts arc negroes. I gather from the census of 1850, that four- 
tenths of the female prisoners are blacks, although they compose but one- 
eightieth of the female population of Ohio. In Massachusetts the convicts 



CIVIL WAE. 245 

in the penitentiary are one-sixth black ; Connecticut, one-third ; New 
York, one-fourth. In Ohio the blacks are not agriculturists. They 
soon become waiters, barbers, and otherwise subservient to the whites. 
They have just enough consequence given to them by late events to be 
pestilent. The resistance of the abolitionists to the Federal authority in 
Ohio, within the past three years, was abetted by colored men, some of 
whom had received schooling enough at Oberlin to be vain and ostenta- 
tiously seditious. 

The last Legislature of Ohio, by their committee, gave their proteges 
this certificate of character in their report : 

" The negro race is looked upon by the people of Ohio as a class to be kept by them- 
selves — to be debarred of social intercourse with 'the whites — to be deprived of all ad- 
vantuges which they cannot enjoy in common with their own class. Deprived of the ad- 
vantages here enumerated, it could not be expected that he should attain any great 
advancement in social improvement. Generally, the negro in Ohio is lazy, ignorant, and 
vicious." 

If this be true, it would be v/ell to inquire why energetic legislation 
was not had, in view of the emancipation schemes here impending, to pre- 
vent this lazy, ignorant, and vicious class from overrunning our State. 
Such legislation was asked and refused. 

If further testimony is needed as to the feeling of the people of Ohio 
and the northwest as to the blacks, I refer you to the speech of an Ohio 
Senator [Mr. Sherman]. Speaking in favor of emancipation in this 
District, he balanced himself on the slack wire after this fashion : 

" This is a good place to begin emancipation for another reason. This is a very Par- 
adise for free negroes. Here tlicy enjoy more social equality than they do any where else. 
In the State where I live we do not like negroes. Wc do not disguise our dislike. As 
my friend from Indiana [Mr. Wright] said yesterday, the whole people of the northwest- 
em States are, for reasons, whether correct or not, opposed to having many negroes 
among them, and that principle or prejudice h.is been engrafted in the legislation of nearly 
all the northwestern States." 

It is a fine thing, the Senator thinks, to have free negroes here ; not 
so good in Ohio. Here they have a paradise ; in Ohio, its opposite, I 
suppose. If the Senator could visit Green's Row, within the shadow of 
this Capitol, henceforth " Tophet and black Gehenna called, the type of 
hell," and note the squalor, destitution, laziness, crime, and degradation, 
there beginning to fester — if he could visit the alleys in whose miserable 
hovels the blacks congregate, he would hardly be reminded of the paradise 
which Milton sang, with its amaranthine flowers [laughter], its blooming 
trees of life, its golden fruitij.ge, its amber rivers rolling over elysian flow- 
ers, its hills and fountains and fresh shades, its dreams of love, and its 
adoration of God. Alas ! he would find nothing here to remind him of 
that high estate in Eden, save the fragrance of the spot and the nakedness 
of its inhabitants. [Laughter.] If the rush of free negroes to this para- 
dise continues, it would be a blessing if Providence should send Satan 
here in the form of a serpent, and an angel to drive the descendants of 
Adam and Eve into the outer world. If it continues, you will have no 
one here but Congressmen and negroes, and that will be punishment 
enough. [Laughter.] You will have to enact a fugitive law, to bring 
the whites to their capital. [Laughter.] The condition of the negroes 
here is not unlike their condition in Ohio. Perhaps it is worse here 



246 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

than in Ohio, for their numbers are greater here in proportion to the 
population. This population already on our hands in Ohio we can take 
care of; but if we cannot stop more from coming, therft is no sense in 
becinninf to colonize the free blacks which we have on hand. I make no 
proposition as to them now. They do not, except in certain localities, in- 
terfere greatly either with our laws or our labor. But the question of 
alloAving more to come in, is the question I discuss, not as to what we 
shall do with what we have. This is a question as gigantic as the schemes 
of emancipation. It is a practical question, as the war is already throw- 
ing them within our borders in great numbers. Slavery may be an evil, 
it may be wrong for southern men to use unpaid labor ; but Avhat will be 
the condition of the people of Ohio when the free jubilee shall have come 
in its ripe and rotten maturity? If slavery is bad, its condition, with an 
unrestrained black population, only double what we now have, partly 
subservient, partly slothful, partly criminal, and all disadvantageous and 
ruinous, will be far worse. 

I do not speak these things out of any unkindness to the negro. It is 
not for the interest of the free negroes of my State that that class of the 
population should be increased. I speak as their friend when I oppose such 
immigration. Neither do I blame the negro altogether for his crime, im- 
providence, and sloth. He is under a sore calamity in this country. He 
is inferior, distinct, and separate, and he has, perhaps, sense enough to 
perceive it. The advantages and equality of the white man can never be 
his. As Dr. Fuller expresses it : 

" He sees and knows that it is his color only, that color given him by God, which ex- 
cludes him and his posterity from this noble and ennobling competition. And now, what 
must be the effect upon his character ? It is impossible but that the worst feelings, envy, 
hatred, vindictiveness, will secretly work in his bosom, rendering him unhappy in himself, 
and dangerous to the country. Already have we had fearful premonitions flashing up 
here and there ; and rest assured, nothing but fear represses the utterance, deep and loud, 
of passions which are only the more fierce because as yet they can have no vent. If the 
free African is to remain in this country, he must 'either enjoy social equality and amal- 
gamate with the white race, which is impossible, or he will be discontented, unhappy, and 
will be ultimately exterminated. He would not be fit for freedom, he would not be a man, 
if he could be satisfied with his position." 

If history teaches any thing, it is that it is as hard to make a ser\-ile 
people free, as a free people slaves, and that a conflict of races, which 
must result from this policy of emancipation, will only end in the destruc- 
tion of the weaker. Rome, Greece, West India, all point to the great 
mistake of breaking rudely the social system of a people. It was only 
the other day that the news from Jamaica told us of the insurrection of 
negroes, and their attack on a principal city. A year or so ago, if we are 
to credit Andrew Johnson, the insurrection of negroes in East Tennessee 
was caused by a fear that the whites would exterminate the negro popula- 
tion en massa, from a jealousy of negro labor. In this city, at any mo- 
ment, we may look for an emeute occasioned by the crowding out of white 
labor by black contrabands. The Government is now paying, to support 
negroes, thousands of dollars weekly, out of the hard-earned money of the 
people, raised to put down the rebellion ; so at Fortress Monroe ; so at 
Port Royal. 

Let us heed the lesson which history has given in other times, as to 



crvTL WAE. 247 

what is convenient and advantageous under similar circumstances. France 
broke the fetters from the Haytian blacks, under the lead of Jacobins like 
the member from Illinois. In less than a half century, the industry and 
commerce of Hayti were annihilated ; the Sabbath, the family, and the 
school became ol)solete ; the missionaries were more in danger — as the 
historian of the West Indies, Mr. Edwards, says — of being eaten than of 
being heard. [Laughter.] Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian jninis- 
ters were expelled with a persecution equal to that exhibited lately on the 
mountains of Syria. Hayti was free ! But her freedom was the freedom 
of fiends. Unschooled, undisciplined, she ran riot in her' liberty. Her 
career has but one advantage. It admonishes us of what our fate shall 
be, if we are launched on the same stormful sea. 

Mr. LovEJOY. "Will the gentleman allow me a moment ? 

Mr. Cox. No, sir ; I will not. 

Mr. LovEJOY. Then I raise the question of order, that I am entitled 
to ask the gentleman a question, inasmuch as he alluded to some member 
from the State of Illinois. I want to know to whom he referred. He 
called some gentleman from Illinois a Jacobin. 

Mr. Cox. That is no point of order ; but I will tell the gentleman in 
confidence whom I meant. I meant him. [Laughter.] 

Mr. LovEJOY. That is what 1 wanted to know. Now, I want to ask 
the gentleman another question. 

Mr. Cox. I did not mention anybody's name ; but the gentleman at 
once saw the appropriateness of the appellation. 

Mr. LovEJOY. We will try that when I come to answer the gentleman. 

Mr. Cox. The London "■ Times " gives a truthful picture of the 
freed negro- of Hayti, which has its counterpart here already : 

" The uejiro is a lazy animal, without any foresight, and therefore requiring to be led 
and compelled. He is decidedly inferior, very little raised above the mere animal. He is 
void of self-reliance, and is the creature of circumstauces ; scarcely fitted to take care of 
himself; has no care for to-morrow; has no desire for property strong enough to induce 
him to labor ; lives from hand to mouth. In Jamaica, emancipation has thrown enor- 
mous tracts of land out of cultivation, and on these the negro squats, getting all he wants 
with very little trouble, and sinking, in the most absolute fashion, back to the savage 
state." 

But it may be urged that there were too many blacks for the whites in 
the West Indies, and the experiment failed in consequence. Then let us 
go to Canada, where our slaves are imder English laws, and in the midst 
of people not specially prejudiced. The testimony is that settlements at 
Chatham, Dawn, Amherstburg, Buxton, Dresden, and other points, are 
utter failures. It was soon discovered that the blacks preferred charity 
to labor. The blacks proved lazy, shiftless, improvident, " there not be- 
ing more than three or four families of a different character out of the 
one hundred and fifty which comprised the settlement at Buxton, They 
suffer terribly iu Avinter for want of clothing. The Dresden settlement, 
planned on the principle of the Socialists, proved a total failure. A few 
years since Chatham was a bright and prosperous village ; but now more 
than a quarter of its population are negroes, and thVee-fourths of them 
are worthless idlers and petty thieves." But it may still be urged, tliat 
in the North — iu Ohio — the free negro will work, will rise, will add to the 
security of the State and the prosperity of the people. I select one from 



248 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

a String of black gems. I select it from the district of my friend [Mr. 
Harrison], who will avouch its correctness. Greene County, Ohio, has 
nearly 1,500 negroes. The following extract from the Xenia (Ohio) 
" News" (a Republican paper in Greene County), will give some idea of 
their condition : 

" There are about one hundred negroes in Greene County who are always out of em- 
ployment. A part of these are those who have lately been freed by their masters, and 
furnished with a bonus, on which they are now gentlemanly loafing. Our jail is contin- 
ually filled with negroes committed for petty olfences, such as affrays, petty larceny, 
drunkenness, assault and battery, for whose prosecution and imprisonment the town of 
Xeiiia has to pay about five hundred dollars per annum. And to such persons going to 
jail is rather a pleasure than a disgrace. They are better fed and lodged there than when 
vagabondizing round our streets. 

" We have seen negro prostitutes flaunting down' Main street, three or four abreast, 
sweeping all before them indiscriminately. We have seen ladies of respectability running 
upon the cellar doors, and even into gutters, to avoid being run over by these impudent 
hussies. It was only the other evening that we saw a lady completely turned around by 
some black girls, who never deviated from their path in the middle of the sidewalk ; and 
our own cheek has burned with indignation at the lecherous smile of invitation which 
has been flung into our faces by these swarthy demoiselles. Other gentlemen have com- 
plained of the insulting boldness of their address. But we are sickened with the recital. 
It is a disagreeable task to lance the sore which has long been gathering unheeded ; and 
it is equally so to probe this evil, which unawares is growing in our midst. As we have 
in a former number already said, we feel no prejudice against the black man on account 
of color, or for mere degradation ; but, at the same time, we are unwilling that we should 
be morally infected by contact with an inferior race, the result of which contact is in no 
way beneficial to the black, and highly injurious to the white." 

Some years ago, there was a negro colony established in Brown Coun- 
ty, Ohio, as to which the Cincinnati " Gazette " said that " in a little 
while the negroes became too lazy to play." A Senator in Ohio charac- 
terized the colony as follows : 

" The black settlement in Brown County was made in 1819, the original number lo- 
cated there being four hundred and twenty, for whom about two thousand acres of land 
were procured. From the commencement there has been no improvement in their morals 
or habits. Idleness and vice are the prevailing concomitants. The cost of criminal pros- 
ecutions has been very large in proportion to the number of inhabitants, and keeps up a 
proportionate average with their increase. In the vicinity of this settlement there is not 
a family witliin two miles who are not kept in constant dread of depredations or ipjury 
of some sort. Every thing valuable that can be removed is stolen. They are absolutely 
compelled to confine themselves to what is merely necessary to support life, for any thing 
beyond from hand to mouth must inevitably fall a prey to the lurking vagrants, who, far 
worse than a gang of gf psies, are hovering around seeking literally what they may de- 
vour. And this state of things is not confined to any section alone ; it extends in a 
greater or less degree wherever this portion of the population is permanently located." 

It might be a profitable calculation to ascertain what will be the de- 
preciation of property in Ohio, if the numberless itinerant blacks from the 
South are to be admitted to the State. The House will remember the 
ineffectual efforts of Gerrit Smith to make a black agricultural colony in 
New York. He was obliged to confess that " the mass of them rot both 
physically and morally." I could produce similar evidence from the New 
York " Tribune," but the strength of the statement would not be thus in- 
creased. 

I lay down the proposition that the white and black races thrive best 
apart ; that a commingling of these races is a detriment to both ; that it 
does not elevate the black, and it only depresses the white ; that the his- 



CIVIL WAK. 24:9 

tory of this continent, especially in Hispano-America, shows that stable 
civil order and government are impossible with such a population. In 
Peru their commingling has led to the decay and degradation of their prog- 
eny. Dr. Tschudi, in his travels in Peru, enumerates some dozen crosses 
of the negro, Indian, and white, with their various and vicious products. 
The character of these mixed races is that of brutality, cowardice, and 
crime, which has no parallel in any age or land. If you permit the dom- 
inant and subjugated races to remain upon the same soil, and grant them 
any approach to social and political equality, amalgamation more or less 
is inevitable. It has invariably followed this blending of people, however 
opposite the original stocks. In illustration, let me quote the remark of 
a distinguished divine, Dr. McGill : 

" Look at Mexico, where the proud Castilian, the subjugated Indian, and the barbar- 
ous African slave, were all made free and equal just about one generation or thirty-two 
years ago, by a single decree, to meet what was considered ' a military nccessit)-.' More 
than half of the whole population is already mixed-blooded ; and just as am^gamation 
advances, degradation deepens ; anarchy prevails ; laws, constitutions, and the ballot-box 
are a mockery ; wave after wave of military despotism has left that Republic, of more 
than eight millions of souls, one of the fairest regions under heaven for the acquisition of 
wealth and glory, without money, without credit, without commerce, without union, with- 
out religion, until at length the ambition of Spain herself seeks to remand the abject 
people to their old repudiated thraldom." 

Is this the fate to be commended to the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic population 
of the United States? Tell me not that this amalgamation will not go on 
in the North. What mean the mulattoes in the North, far exceeding, as 
the census of 1850 shows, the mulattoes of the South? There are more 
free mulattoes than there are free blacks in the free States. In Ohio 
there are seven mulatto children for one in Virginia, according to the 
negro population ; and in Indiana and Illinois there are five for one in 
Tennessee and Georgia ! As the white people of the North do not marry 
blacks, these mulattoes must have been born out of wedlock. While, then, 
there are more mulattoes in the free States than blacks ; in the South, on 
the contrary, there is only one mulatto to twelve blacks ! How does this 
occur? I leave it to my colleague from the Portage district [Mr. Edger- 
ton], who gave us his opinions, in a pert way, about the Democratic ad- 
dress. It is recorded that in his county a white woman of Akron sued 
out a habeas corpus (for the writ runs there yet, at least where there is 
color of right) to take a mulatto baby from a Mrs. Jones, a negro woman, 
under whose care it had been placed by its white mother, and who had 
become attached to the pickaninny. In the course of the discussion Mi"S. 
J. told the white woman that she thought " if the white folks were mean 
enough to have nigger babies, they ought to be willing to let colored peo- 
ple bring them up." [Laughter.] So the judge decided. These little 
straws account for the preponderance of mulattoes North. 

The mixture tends to deteriorate both races. Physiology has called 
our attention to the results of such connections. These I'esults show dif- 
ferences in stature and strength, depending on the parentage, with a 
corresponding difterence in the moral character, mental capacity, and 
worth of labor. The mulatto is not long-lived. It is a fact that no in- 
surance company will insure their lives. In New England there is one 
blind negro for every 807, while at the South there is one for every 



250 EIGHT TEAES EST CONGRESS. 

2,635. In New England there is one insane negro for every 980, and 
in the South one for 3,080. If they were the only insane persons there, I 
would not complain. They catch it there from the whites. [Laughter.] 
It is neither philanthropic nor congenial to send the negro to the North, 
where he wilts, when in the congenial South he increases in numbers even 
in slavery! Our statistician (Mansfield, Ohio Statistics, 1861) p. 41, 
boasts that Ohio has men of greater height, by actual measurement, than 
England, Belgium, or Scotland, and in breadth of chest nearly equal to 
that of Scotland, and above all others. I do not offer myself as a speci- 
men. [Laughter.] Biit how long before the manly, warlike people of 
Ohio, of fair hair and blue eyes, in a large preponderance, would, in spite 
of Bibles and morals, degenerate iinder the wholesale emancipation and 
immigration favored by my colleague? The free negroes will become 
equal, or will continue imequal to the whites. Equality is a condition 
which i| self-protective, wanting nothing, asking nothing, able to take care 
of itself. It is an absurdity to say that two races so dissimilar as black 
and white, of different origin, of unequal capacity, can succeed in the 
same society when placed in competition. There is no such example in 
history of the success of two separate races under such circumstances. 
Less than sixty years ago Ohio had thousands of an Indian population. 
She has now but thirty red men in her borders. The negro, with a dif- 
ference of color indelible, has been freed under every variety of circum- 
stances ; but his freedom has too often been nominal. Prejudice stronger 
than all principles, though not always stronger than lust, has imperatively 
separated the whites from the blacks. In the school-house, the church, or 
the hospital, the black man must not seat himself beside the white ; even 
in death and at the cemetery the line of distinction is drawn. To abolish 
slavery the North must go still further, and forget that fatal prejudice of 
race which governs it, and which makes emancipation so illusory. To 
give men their liberty, to open to them the gates of the city, and then say, 
" There, you shall live among yourselves, you shall marry among your- 
selves, you shall form a separate society in society," is to create a cursed 
caste and replace slaves by pariahs. Again, it is neither convenient nor 
advantageous to the State of Ohio to have this influx of blacks. It may 
be abstractly wrong to debar them from our State ; but some one has 
wisely said, that " the abstract principles of right and wrong we know, 
but not the processes nor the duration of their Avorking out in history. 
AU the white handkerchiefs in Exeter Hall will not force the general Con- 
gress of Nations to decide questions otherwise than by the laws of con- 
venience and advantage." Were there no prejudices or instincts against 
the color or race in our midst, a true State policy would forbid such a 
hoi'dc of Africans as emancipation would send to Ohio. Ohio has a larger 
circuit of slave territory abutting on her border, than any other Northern 
State. The Ohio River runs over 500 miles along ovir border, dividing us 
from Kentucky and Virginia. Illinois and Indiana forbid all negroes 
from other States. Since 1850 Iowa and Wisconsin have had the same 
policy. Is Ohio to be the only asylum for the slaves of Virginia and 
Kentucky and the other States south ? Suppose these schemes of eman- 
cipation succeed ; or suppose tliey do not, and the emancipation incident 
to the war goes on, what proportion of the slaves of the South will cross 



CIVIL WAR. 251 

into Ohio? They will not go to Canada, not now. They will move into 
lower Ohio, with the consuming power of the army worm. By the cen- 
sus, in Virginia and Kentucky alone, the colored people number 790,102 ! 
How many of these blacks would come to Ohio ? 

In spite, however, of the laws of Illinois, Indiana, and other "Western 
States, the slaves of the Mississippi valley will, if freed, seek the North- 
west. They will slip through into Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Indiana. 
The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Julian], the other day, said that in 
his part of the State the law was a dead letter. He is no doubt partially 
correct. In the past ten years the ratio of increase of free colored people 
in the United States has been 10"97 per cent., that of the slaves 23"38 per 
cent., and that of the whites 38' 12 per cent. In California the negroes 
have increased 296'67 per cent, compared to the white increase of 310*84 
per cent. There are no laws of prohibition in California ; while in Oregon, 
where such laws exist, the whole ratio of increase is 299*96 percent, com- 
pared with a loss of 41*54 per cent, of blacks ! In other States there is 
this ratio: Illinois, white increase of 101*49, black only 30*04 ; Iowa, 
white increase 251*22, black increase 207*21 ; ludiana, white increase 
37*14, black loss 3*49 ; Wisconsin, white increase 154*10, black 133*22. 
In these States the law forbids blacks ; but in spite of it they get in, but 
not to that extent which they do in Ohio and Michigan, where such 
laws do not exist. In the latter State the white increase is 87*89 per 
cent., the black is double, viz. : 164*15 ! It will be perceived by an exam- 
ination of the census, that it is in the Northwest that the black race is 
increasing ; while in other States further East and North they do not in- 
crease in the same ratio. It is the Northwest which will be Africanized 
by the schemes here proposed. The slaves in the Mississippi valley alone, 
in the States of Arkansas. Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and 
Tennessee, number 1,499,079. This does not include the free blacks, 
who would be compelled to share the exodus. Then Kansas, Nebraska, 
Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, 
would be their asylum ; but as the States west of the Ohio are in advance 
of us in preventing this vicious immigration, Ohio, under the welcome of 
my colleague and his friends, would have more than her fair quota. Tem- 
porizing politicians cannot blink this question. While they advocate 
emancipation, some of them present an alternative — colonization. If 
more negroes are to be freed, and my State is to be their asylum, I am of 
Jefferson's opinion, that their freedom ought to be accompanied with emi- 
gration to some other land, compulsory if necessary. But Mr. Greeley 
and others do not advocate colonization to mitigate abolition. The fact 
that many who honestly contemplate abolition are willing to lay a tax of 
thousands of millions to colonize, is a confession that they believe that 
free negroes cannot exist in the country without its ruin. 

It has been said that we ought to free the African, even though we 
build a bridge of gold over the chasm from slavery to freedom ! It will 
prove a Bridge of Sighs to both black and white. Its piers and arches 
are to be built out of the moil and toil of American labor. But to its 
cost : I have some data on which to calculate. In 1858 I voted (ac- 
cording to an old law existing since the time of Mr. Monroe) money to 
send back slaves taken on board the slave ship *■' Echo," on the 21st of 



252 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

August, 1858. That law requires all such slaves to be taken back to 
Africa, and supported there for one year on the coast. This is a humane 
law, bvit an expensive one. By a contract made between the Colonization 
Society and Mr. Buchanan (seeUx. Doc, 2d Sess. S5th Gong., vol. 2, pt. 1), 
the Government agreed to pay $45,000, or $150 apiece, for the transpor- 
tation and support of the 300 Africans one year. It did not include buy- 
ing lands for them. There was no expense for compensation to slave 
owners. Now, if the slaves of all the South are to be paid for at the rate 
of $300 apiece — the amount paid here in the District — and land is to be 
bought beside, you may approximate to the result of this enormous Uto- 
pian scheme. Mr. Goodhue, a gentleman who is connected with the 
Government, and a statistician, makes this estimate : 

"By the census of last year, there were 3,952,801 slaves in the United States and ter- 
ritories. I have already shown that 454,441, which belonged to the border States, would 
be worth, at $300 each, |l36,332,300. There remam to be disposed of, therefore, 3,498,360 
slaves embraced in the country subject to the rebels, but including, of course, large num- 
bers belonging to friends of the Union, who have been constrained into obedience to the 
rebel authorities agaiast their wills. At the rate of $300, the slaves in the rebel States 
would be worth $1,040,508,000 ; and adding the cost of compensation to the border 
States, at the same rate, the aggregate expense of emancipation would be $1,185,840,300. 
Or, for the convenience of round numbers, the cost of emancipation would be, at $300 
per head, twelve hundred million dollars ($1,200,000,000)." 

Add to this $1,200,000,000 the cost of transportation and mainten- 
ance for a year, at $150 per negro, and you have $1,800,000,000. Add 
further, for the price of the soU to be bought for them, say ten millions ; 
and the cost of starting them in a strange land, without roads, houses, 
teachers, and leaders, ten more ; and you may approach the stupendous 
result. This is no violence of mine upon arithmetic. This is the cool 
calculation of men eager to carry out, at small cost, their schemes. I 
give credit to the motive which prompts colonization. But where are 
these enormous sums to come from ? " Oh, the war expenses are as much, 
and ought to pay it ;" or, as Sir Boyle Roche would say, " every man 
ought to give his last guinea to protect the remainder." Are not the war 
expenses already rim up to such a sum that men flounder in their calcu- 
lation of them? But, it is said, the war expenses are not yet done, and 
by this scheme we may save the remainder. I would like to think so. 
Such schemes of emancipation will only prolong the war and add to its 
expenses. This enormous tax is to be paid, it is said, in thirty-seven 
years, at an annual tax of $150,000,000 ! We are to use our credit by 
bonds, and thus establish a national debt. Great as our resources are, 
this burden is too enormous. It leaves no hope. It creates despair. Ask 
the question of the people : " Can you meet these liabilities in addition to 
the war del>t, now estimated by Senator Simmons, at the end of July, 
1802, at $555,000,000, and to be doubled before the war is over, suppos- 
ing that it will end in a year? " 

Such a scheme even destroys a large portion of the means to pay for 
itself. The labor of the negroes after they are freed and colonized is 
nothing, worse than nothing. It is a loss to the country of just what it 
will take in time and trouble to replace it by other labor equally good. It 
is a loss to tlie country of the labor and the laborers themselves, estimated 
at $600,000,000. 



CIVIL WAK. 253 

Then we have the following results : 

Cost of compensation to owners of slaves $1,200,000,000 

Cost of deportation and maintenance one year 600,000,000 

Cost of land to be purchased, bridges, houses, roads, &c 20,000,000 

Loss of the labor and laborers to the country and to the masters before 

a new supply of labor can be had 600,000,000 

Debt already, according to Secretary Chase's last report. . .#. 491,445,084 

War debt additional by 1863, according to Senator Simmons 500,000,000 

$3,411,445,984 

This sum almost equals the national debt of Great Britain, which, as 
the accumulation of centuries, amounts to £757,486,997, or about $3,- 
787,000,000 ! Here is a bridge of gold for the African exodus ! Ohio 
builds one span of one-tenth, to cost $34,114,459 ; my district pays one- 
twentieth of that, or $1,705,722. But how much of the accumulations 
of our people will this sum take ? Secretary Chase tells us that, accord- 
ing to the census of ,1860, the i-eal and personal property of the people of 
the United States is $16,102,924,116 I Hence one-fifth of all we have 
would scarcely meet this enormous liability ! In the name of economy, 
sense, and humanity, may not the people be tempted to repudiate this pro- 
digious expenditure ? The men who levy it, sir, are running a desperate 
hazard. Where, by the tax to put it down, secession has placed only 
yokes of wood on the people, which they will cheerfully bear, this 
scheme makes yokes of iron ! Think you the authors of So grand a 
scheme can escape the vengeance of the people by resignation or exile ? 
Theirs will be a doom worse than that of the Gracchi or Robespierre ! 

But these dreamers do not intend to buy and colonize. Their ethics, 
like their speeches, are cribbed from the pharieaical spoutings of Exeter 
Hall. The Ilouse has voted down the project of colonization proposed by 
the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Blaik]. They wiU not so outrage 
human nature — not they. What ! says Wendell Phillips, export the four 
millions which are the fulcrum of the lever by which the nation is to be 
restored ! Oh, no. Is not this the land of their birth? Even the colo- 
nization members do not propose coercion. What then? 

It is proposed to free all, and leave chance to distribute them among 
the people. Chance, sir, is a poor economist, and a worse ruler. Let us 
consider the effect of this proposition. ^ senator from Vermont [Mr. 
Collamer] fixed the proportion of this distribution at one negro to every 
five or six whites. He was right. By the census of 1860, there are in 
the United States 27,008,081 whites and 3,999,535 slaves. If the slaves 
were distributed equally north and south, this would make one negro to 
every seven whites ; but if all are driven north by social convulsion, as 
shown by the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Mallory], it would make 
more than one black for every five white persons. But we know that the 
African will not go to New England, at least in such numbers as to other 
States. He does not thrive there. In Boston the city register shows that 
for the last five years there were 134 births to 376 deaths among the col- 
ored people. If Ohio were open, as my colleague advocates, we would 
have at least twice as many negroes flock into that State as to the rest of 
the North, and twice as many in central and southern Ohio as in northern 
Ohio ; or one negro for every three white persons in the State, and per- 



254 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGRESS. 

haps twice that ratio in southern and central Ohio. Take Massachusetts 
as the ftiir average of the North. There, every inducement is offered to 
his immi "-ration. He is made a voter ; he is admitted to the bar ; he is 
even made better than a white man in suffrage, provided the white man 
comes from Germany or Ireland. Yet, in a population of 1,231,065, the 
blacks number only 9,454, or one black to 130 of the population ; while 
in Ohio, with not double the population, there is one black to 63 of the 
population. The increase of blacks in Ohio is 43-30 per cent., while in 
Massachusetts it is only 23*96 per cent. So that I am justified, not alone 
by the census, but most by the geographical position and nearness of Ohio 
to the South and the extent of its slave State border, in inferring that she 
would receive more than double the number assigned to the States north 
by Mr. Collamer's apportionment. What, then, would be the result? 
Ohio has 2,303,374 white people. She would then have a ratio of one 
black to every three persons, an addition of 767,791 to her black popula- 
tion ! My district, composed of Franklin, Licking, and Pickaway Coun- 
ties, where negroes seem to congregate more than among their professed 
friends in northern Ohio, would have scattered among its 110,941 persons, 
blacks to the number of 36,980 ! This is nearly equal to the whole 
population of Licking County ! They would be distributed as follows : 
Licking, 12,370 ; Franklin, 16,787 ; and Pickaway, 7,823. 

But even this does not do justice to the inexorable figures, for my dis- 
trict is peculiarly blessed with negro population. Whether it is because 
the people are more generous in their treatment of the blacks ; whether 
Kentucky and Virginia families who settled in it are more numerous ; 
or whatever is the cause, still it is true, by the census of 1860, that^ 
with a population in my district of about one-twentieth of the whole 
population of the State, it has one-fourteenth of its blacks, or 2,660 out 
of 36,673. 

One would suppose that in the Western Reserve, where the profession 
of philanthropy is ever arising in prayer, in speech, and in print, where 
for years they cultivated no civil discipline which interfered with their 
notions of slavery, there would be throngs of blacks. Is it so ? Thou 
iron-tougued census, speak ! In the ten counties of the Western Reserve 
there are but 1,854 blacks, a few more than in one county of my district 1 
Why they especially avoid Ashtabula, where there are only twenty-five 
negroes, I cannot say. Is it the prodigal profession and scant practice of 
humanity? [Laughter.] Or has Mr. Giddings, with a view to protect 
property and keep up its price, coaxed them into Canada, wdiere happily 
he is now domiciled? And there is Geauga, with not as many negroes 
as Fulton County has Indians ! What a commentary on representative 
fidelity is here ! The member from Ashtabula, Mahoning, and Trumbull 
[Mr. lIuTCHiNs] speaks for 166 negroes ; but from his piteous ado, one 
woukl suppose that he represented at least as many Africans as the King 
of Dahomey. [Laughter.] And there is my smiling colleague from the 
northwest [Mr. Ashley], whose rotund form is ready to become like 
Niobe — all tears — by his grief for the poor negro [laughter] ; whose , 
gushes of eloquence in their behalf remind one of the Arab lyrics in praise 
of the dark maidens of Abyssinia when they sung : 



CIVIL WAE. 255 

" Oh ! the black amber, the black amber ! Its perfume by far 
Is sweeter than all else ou earth or in star ; 
The lotus of Nile, the rose of Cashmere, 
My senses enthrall, only when thou art not here." [Great laughter.] 

Yet, from the whole eleven counties of his district, he cannot count as 
many negroes by half as live in my own county. I am not particularly 
proud of representing a greater number of Africans than my colleagues. 
I think, so far as the chattering goes about their inalienable rights and 
everlasting wrongs, I am entirely uusuited to represent them ; yet I hope 
that in actual kindness to them I do represent the white people of my 
district, whose practical benevolence has attracted to that portion of the 
State an undue share. Wliat I fear is, and what I deduce is, that this 
disproportionate share will be continued when the bills voted for by my 
colleagues are law, and the black exodus has begun. 

I have the honor, as it is fondly believed by some, to be a prospective 
constituent of either my friend from the Clark district [Mr. Shellabar- 
Ger], or the honored representative of the Madison district [Mr. Harri- 
son], with whose votes I so often concur. The Legislature of Ohio has 
made for my especial contemplation a new district, composed of the coun- 
ties of Clark, Madison, Franklin, and Greene. If my two friends, who 
do not agree well in their votes, will consent to make the race next fall, I 
will, perhaps, edge in a conservative word for the general welfare. I 
commend to them this question I am discussing. This new district, sir, 
is rich in colored materials. It was the select asylum for the blacks in 
their northern movement. Greene County, to which I have referred for the 
character of its African damsels, is a second Paradise of free negroes. It has 
1,475 blacks. The benevolence of Horace Mann at Antioch College led 
the blacks to beheve that here they would repose in the green pastures as 
contentedly as their brethren bask in the rays of a Congo sun. They 
were to be elevated without effort to an equality with the white race ; 
and here they gathered to witness the miracle. You may wash them 
year after year, with your philanthropic soap and water, you will not turn 
them white, though they may become gray. In this new district there are 
3,821 negroes to 111,052 whites. y. Here are twice as many negroes as in 
the whole Western Reserve ! One negro to every three Avhite persons 
would give 37,017 ! A very pretty mosaic ! A sweet and fragrant nest ! 
And this is the Afric's coral strand, to which my missionary labors are to 
be directed ! Why, here are one-tenth of the negroes of Ohio in this dis- 
trict, with only one-twentieth of the population of the State ! So that in 
this district, if the ratio continued, we should have twice as many as our 
fair share (at one negro to three of the white population) , or some eighty 
thousand negroes ! 

How will this jmmigration of the blacks affect labor in Ohio and in 
the North? Firsts directly, it effects our labor, as all unproducing classes 
detract fi-om the prosperity of a community. Ohio is an agricultural 
State. Negroes will not farm. They prefer to laze or serve around 
towns and cities. This is evident from the census of Cincinnati, Cleve- 
land, Toledo, Dayton, Columbus, Zanesville, and Chillicothe, where more 
than three-fourths of the blacks of Ohio are to be found. But is it said 
that the plantation hands, when free, will work the lands ? Such is not 



256 EIGHT YEAE8 EST CONGRESS. 

the experience on the Carolina coast. A writer in the Boston " Journal," 
from Port Royal, on the 14th of May, 1862, estimates that there are 
10,000 contrabands on the islands. They have planted some corn, pota- 
toes, and cotton, under the Government direction. This writer says : 

" It is difficult to make the negroes worli, or induce them to (if that sounds better 
North), as they find something to eat from Massa Lincoln, and seem to feel they are not 
' free niggers ' if they work. So they often take a day or several days to themselves, 
when their services are perhaps most needed, and go to Hilton Head or Beaufort. For 
instance, some ground had been prepared for ploughing and planting, but just as they 
were needed the few men who understood that part went off for two days without the 
least notice, thus delaying the planting, which was even then late. Until some method is 
adopted to make them feel the necessity of work for their own good. Government will 
receive but little benefit comparatively." 

Will they do any better North ? We know what they have done. 
There are exceptions. I speak of the masses of blacks. Have they done 
any better at Fortress Monroe, or even here, under military surveillance? 
Let their condition answer. Food for the present is Avhat they crave ; 
and when that is had, no more Avork till they crave again. But suppose 
they do work, or work a little, or a part of them work well ; what then 
is the etTect upon our mechanics and laboring men? It is said that many 
of them make good blacksmiths, carpenters, &c., and especially good ser- 
vants. If that be so, there are white laborers North whose sweat is to be 
coined in.to taxes to ransom these negroes ; and the first effect of the ran- 
som is to take the bread and meat from the families of white laborers. If 
the wages of white labor are reduced, they will ask the cause. That 
cause will be found in the delusive devices of members of Congress. The 
helps of German and Irish descent, the workmen and mechanics in the 
shop and field, will find some, if not all, of these negroes, bought by their 
toil, competing with them at every turn. Labor will then go down to a 
song. It will be degraded by such association. Our soldiers, when they 
return, 100,000 strong, to their Ohio homes, will find these negroes, or 
the best of them, filling their places, felling timber, ploughing ground, 
gathering crops, &c. How their martial laurels will brighten when they 
discover the result of their services ! Labor that now ranges at from $1 
to $2 per day, will fall to one-half. Already, in this District, the Govern- 
ment is hiring out the fugitives at from $2 to $8 per month, while Avhite 
men are begging for work. Nor is the labor of the most of these negroes 
desirable. No system of labor is so unless it be steady. They will get 
their week's wages, and then idle the next week away. Many will be- 
come a charge and a nuisance upon the public charity and the county 
poor tax. One hundred of the fifteen hundred negroes of Greene County, 
as we have seen, were drones and scamps. So in Brown County. Ran- 
dolph's negroes, taken to Mercer County, were nuisances. If the blacks 
are distributed into the country, they may work for a little time and for small 
wages, and work Avell for a time ; but when Avork groAvs irksome, and 
they '■'• become too lazy to play," they Avill steal. Corn and chickens dis- 
appear in their vicinage, Avitli tlic facility of shirts from the hedges where 
Falstaff marched his tatterdemalions. And for this result directly to 
northern labor, Avhat compensation is there to the southern half of our 
country by their removal? Herein lies the indirect effect of their immi- 
gration upon northern labor. By this emancipation, the labor system of 



. 



I 



CIVIL WAE. 257 

the South is destroyed. The cotton, Avhich brought us $200,000,000 per 
annum, a good part of which came to Ohio to purchase pork, corn, flour, 
beef, and machinery, where is it? Gone. What of the cotton fabric, 
almost as common as bread among the laboring classes ? With 4,000,- 
000 of indolent negroes, its production is destroyed, and the ten millions of 
artisans in the world who depend on it for employment, and the hundred 
millions who depend on it for clothing, will find the fabric advanced a 
hundred per cent. So with sugar, and other productions of slave labor. 
For all these results, labor will curse the jostling elements Avhich thus dis- 
turb the markets of the world. Another indirect effect upon the labor of 
the North, and especially of Ohio, is that the markets of the South will be 
closed, not by blockade, but forever. Our prices of corn, Avheat, pork, 
beef, &c., will be reduced by a contracted market. The surplus in Ohio, 
the past year, was, of grain 25,000,000 bushels, of hogs 1,000,000, of 
cattle 300,000, exports from the State, or more than $50,000,000 Avorth ; 
while other articles of export wci'e worth $50,000,000 more. This pro- 
duction is above that which Ohio can use. If our market is restricted, 
who suffers? The farmer. If he suffers, who will pay the taxes in 
Ohio? Prices must be remunerative or agriculture suffers. If agricul- 
ture suffers in Ohio, every man, woman, and child feels it. If this scheme 
for Africanizing the State, by destroying southern labor, succeeds, no fos- 
tering care or scientific skill can make up the loss to the farmer. Such 
schemes, by destroying the sources of labor, destroy themselves. Yet 
these dreamers cling to their notions with the happy impudence of Mun- 
chausen, who went to the moon for the silver hatchet, by means of a 
Turkey bean which grew up to its horns. When his bean was dried by 
the heat, he twisted a rope of straw by which to descend, fastening one 
end to the horns. Alas ! like many similar schemes, it was too short. 
But, holding fast by the left hand, with his right he cut the long and use- 
less upper part, which, when tied to the lower end, brought him safely to 
the earth ! Such will be the result of these lunatic experiments upon the 
labor systems of the country. The sooner they descend from the moon 
with their rope of straw, the better. Thus, with loss to the South and 
damage to the North, both irreparable, and no gain to either, the year 
of negro jubilee is to be ushered into existence. 

In conclusion, then, if the negro cannot be colonized without bvirdens 
intolerable, and plans too delusive ; if he cannot be freed and left South 
without destroying its labor, and without his extermination ; if he cannot 
come North without becoming an outcast and without ruin to Northern 
industry and society, what shall be done ? Where shall he go ? He an- 
swers for himself. The paterfamilias of a drove of negroes, the other 
day in the Valley of Virginia, was asked, " Where are you going ? " " Dun' 
no, massa, dun' no ; gwine somewhere, I reckon." [Laughter.] His 
friends can answer very little better. But such answer is not statesman- 
ship. What shall be done ? I answer, Representatives ! that our duty is 
written in our oath ! It is in the Constitution of the United States ! 
Leave to the States their owti institutions where that instrument leaves 
them, keep your faith to the Crittenden resolutions, be rid of all ambigu- 
ous schemes, and trust under God for the revelation of His will concern- 
ing these black men in our land, and the overtlirow by our power of this 
17 



258 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGEESS. 

rebellion. Have you no faith in God, who writes the history of nations? 
Great as is our power, wise as is our system of government, brave as are 
our soldiers, unequalled as our fleets are of iron, it is only for Him to breathe 
upon us, and our power will fade. I know tlmt His power can solve 
these dark problems of our fate. Let us do our duty to the order estab- 
lished by our fathers, under His wise inspiration, and all may be well. 
In this night of our gloom my faith has been in Him, even as my oath 
to the Constitution which He inspired is made, " so help me God ! " 
Cleaving to that, I can see the dawn of hope ! Leaving it, I see nothing 
but perjury, fraud, and a darker night of disaster. , In our Constitution 
alone, under God, is our national salvation ! 

But I have no faith in, and no hope of this Congress, for they have 
no faith in God or the Constitution. Greece had a law called ypa(pi] rrapa- 
vofxcov, whereby any man was tried and punished in a common court like 
a criminal, for any law which had passed on his motion in the assembly 
of the people, if that law appeared vmjust or prejudicial to the public. 
If there were such a law here, how few of the majority of this House 
would escape the dock of the criminal and the rope of the gibbet. The 
member from Illinois [Mr. Lovejoy] would then receive the beatitudes 
which follow suspended animation. [Laughter.] But what of the mem- 
ber from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] ? He has been ever ready, in his de- 
fence of black men and black character, to assail personally those with 
whom he differed. He could not pass by my humble speech as to Hayti 
without some sarcastic flings and much misrepresentation, which he re- 
fused to allow me to answer. He did not like my style of description, 
and wondered why there was no laugh at my humor about the negro in 
court dress. He is more successful. He never speaks but he is laughed 
at. His speeches have been well described as being every word a sepul- 
chre, every sentence a tomb, and every speech a graveyard. [Laughter.] 
[n this gi'avcyard he thought to bury me, as he had buried others. But 
even that voice of his, vox et prceterea nihil, which may be likened to the 
" cry of an itinerant bull, in pursuit of society, moaning upon the broad 
prairies of the West" [great laughter], would, if that Grecian law existed, 
be choked forever. He would then lind his melodramatic performances 
close before the fiftli act, in a tragedy, which an admiring audience would 
applaud TO the echo ! Faithless to their own resolves, faithless to the Presi- 
dent's message and proclamations, faithless to their pledges to the army and 
the people, faithless to the memories of The past and the hopes of the fu- 
ture, faithless to the Constitution and to the God of their oath, tliese mad- 
dened zealots pursue the work of destruction. A few short months, and 
even the blacks of America will curse them as their worst enemy. This 
Congress, which ought to be engaged in holding up the hands of the Execu- 
tive, and in giving aid and counsel in putting down this armed rebellion, 
has striven to circumvent the plans of the President, by its immature 
and vindictive bills of confiscation. It has been coopering away at the 
vesscil, hooping it around with infinite pains, by emancipation, while its 
bottom, like the tub of the Danaides, is full of holes and can hold no water. 
Weary in watching its mad designs of revolution and its crazy crotchets 
of black freedom, and for the self-preservation of my native State and 
the North from the black immigration with which it is threatened, I shall 



CIVIL WAE. 259 

go to my home and ask the ballot to speak its denunciation. A few- 
months, and that expression will be had. On it depends the fate of the 
Republic. My belief is, that the people will write the epitaph of this 
Congress, nearly as Gladstone wrote that of the Coalition ministry dur:ng 
the Crimean war : 

Here lies the ashes of the XXXVII. Congress ! 
It found the United States in a war of 
gigantic proportions, involving 
its very existence. 
_; It was content to wield the sceptre of Power 

Wt- and accept the emoluments of office ; 

1^ and used them to overthrow 

the political and social system of the country, which 

it was sworn to protect. 

It saw the fate of thirty-four white commonwealths in peril ; 

but it babbled of the 

NEGRO! 

It saw its patriotic generals and soldiers in the 

field, under the old flag. 

It slandered the one, and in the absence of the other, 

it destroyed his means of labor. 

1^ It talked of Liberty to the black, and 

piled burdens of taxation on white people 

for Utopian schemes. 

The people launched at it the thunderbolt 

of their wrath ; 

and its members sought to avoid punishment, 

by creeping into dishonored 

political graves 

Rcquiescat ! 



I 



MEANING OF THE ELECTIONS OF 1862. 

CONSERVATISM AND RADICALISM PERVERSION OF THE WAR ITS PROLONGATION DISMISSAL OP 

GENERALS — IS COMPROMISE POSSIBLE ? IF SO, WHEN ? LAWS OF WAR — MAXIMS OF VATTEL 

— HOW PEACE MAY BE HAD ENGLISH PERFIDY FRENCH AND FOREIGN MEDIATION 

NATIONAL CONVENTION. 



Delivered in the House of Representatives Decemher 15, 18G2. 



Mr. Chairman : It has been a custom in all civilized countries 
and a part of the Constitution of all free countries, for the administra- 
tion to yield to the popular will whenever it is clearly ascertained. 
In England, when the Ministry are voted down, they surrender their port> 
folios to the Queen. Even in parliament, which is but an imperfect rep- 
resentative of the British people, no Minister, however popular, can 
withstand the sentiment of the Commons. He must resign or rule under 
the scorn- of the nation. In 1832, even the Duke of Wellington was not 
*' iron " enough to resist the popular cry of " Reform." In 1846, when 
Cobden and Bright on the hustings, Villiers, in the House, and Elliott in 
song, raised the cry of Repeal of the Corn Laws and cheap bread for the 
people, the landed aristocracy, who had the power, crumbled before the 



260 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGKESS. 

power of tlie popular voice. Sir Robert Peel, the greatest statesman i 
since Chatham, bowed to the decree. The nation yet honors him for thiS' 
magnanimous statesmanship. Later, during the Crimean war, its gross: 
mismanagement, shown up by an untrammelled press, drove an incompe- 
tent Ministry from power, by a vote of the Commons. In Prussia, iui 
France, and even in Austria, the sovereign and his advisers do not fail to 
conciliate the public mind by some graces of obedience. But here, sir,, 
in this boasted free country, when our great States have pronounced! 
against this Congress, and against its emancipation and other schemes, , 
we have mockeiy, defiance, and persistency in wrong doing. The people ) 
have raised their voice against irresponsible arrests; this House, on itsi 
first day, votes down my resolutions, drav/n in the language of every BiUI 
of Eights in America, and refuses inquiry into these outrages upon the ; 
citizen. The people have condemned that worst relic of the worst times i 
of French tyranny, the lettres de cachet; yet this House, Avith indecorous i 
hurry, lash through a bill of indemnity, which is to confiscate all the rights i 
and remedies of the outraged citizen — a bill, sir, which, if pleaded by a 
minion of power, the Courts would laugh to scorn. The people have con- 
demned the edict of emancipation — an edict which Mr. Seward, on the • 
10th of March last, in a letter to Mr. Adams, declared " would reinvig- • 
orate the declining insurrection in every part of the South ; " yet we have ■ 
the Presidential Message, which proposes to adhere to the condemned I 
proclamation ; and in addition thereto proposes a compensated system of 
emancipation, running to the end of the century. The people desired the 
war to be continued on one line of policy, declared by us last July a year, , 
for the Constitution and the Union ; but this contumacious assembly are ■ 
determined to force it from that line, or abandon the Union. 

My colleague [Mr. Hutchins] spoke the other day for the majority 
here, and gloi'ied in that radicalism which would " reinvigorate the rebel-' 
lion." I think the Irish orator had my colleague in his eye, when he ■ 
spoke of the " universal genius of emancipation." He glories in being a 
radical because he goes to the root. I propose to tap that root for a few 
moments. His speech is not upon a new theme, nor is it freshly handled. 
Its point is its audacious disregard of the sentiment of his own State and ! 
of the North. He is wiser than the " elders " of the Eepublic, whom he 
stigmatizes : for they never found, Avhat he has learned from other and 1 
recent sources, that Slavery and freedom are incompatible in our system. 
He pretends that the real cause of the rebellion lies in this irreconcilable 
antagonism. He forgets that seventy-five years of our history disprove ; 
his fallacies. He urges such antagonism for military reasons ; when the : 
truth is, his party got power by propagating this very heresy of hate. 
The scheme of exterminating slavery as a war measure is an afterthought. 
He claims moreover the rijiht under the Constitution to free all the slaves, , 
because slavery is incompatible with that clause which guarantees to each 
State a republican form of government. He grows wiser than the '' el- 
ders," Avho framed the Constitution, and who lived in Slave States when it 
was made. He thinks the Congress and the Executive can unmake the 
State governments and make new governments for the South when sub- 
jugated. He thus becomes as much of a Disuniocist and traitor as Davis. 
My colleague reproves the President for his delusion, because the Presi- 



CIVIL WAE. 261 

dent hope? for relief by compensated emancipation in 1900. In tliis, the 
daring radicalism of my colleague outstrips even that of the Administra- 
tion. He favors a " Union as it will be, Avhen slavery is eradicated," and 
that makes him a radical. He says radicalism goes to the root. So it 
does. So the savants whom Gulliver found employed the hog to do 
ploughing, to save the Avear and tear of honest agi'iculture. He would 
have us root out slavery or die. Indeed, in picturing our " armies pen- 
etrating the territory of the rebellion, carrying with them this military 
order of freedom inscribed upon their banner," he would have his halt- 
ing friends, like the President, " dare" more ; he quotes the language of 
Mirabeau, the revolutionist, urging no revolt — no revolt — by lialves, no 
timidity, no hesitation from a sense of duty, no sacrifice of passion, no 
half-way indecision in treason ; and he exhorts his confederates in aboli- 
tion that it is better to be resolutely bad than indecisively honest ! This 
is the language of revolution, and the spirit of Satan as Milton pictures 
him in hell. The quotation of my colleague is felicitous ; but it is a re- 
lief to know that his comrades in revolt have not the daring of Davis, the 
manliness of Mirabeau, or the intellect of Satan. He indulges in compar- 
isons between this radicalism, Avhich he espouses, and that conservatism 
which^s now organized under the Democratic name. The Avord conser- 
vative is not the name of a party. It is an element now dominant among 
the people. It represents the principle of repose and strength ; the ideas 
of order and laAv. It defends the Constitution. It would restore the 
Union. When the gentleman likens it to the Israelites who hankered for 
the slavery of Egypt ; Avhen he says that those Avho prefer the Union as it 
Avas, are like the Tories of the Revolution ; Avhen he likens them to the 
Scribes and Pharisees, Avho preferred the doctrines of the elders, he per- 
petrates superficial nonsense. To stigmatize those Avho are in favor of 
the Union of Washington as like the Tories AA^hom Washington fought, is 
worse than the silliest bathos of a mediocre poet, Avhom Horace says gods, 
men, and booksellers despise. To liken the conservative A'oice just ut- 
tered at our elections to the lust of the Israelites for the fleshpots of Egypt, 
has not the dignity of a schoolgirl's rhapsody. The simile Avhich he drew 
betAveen the Scribes and Pharisees, and those Avho reverence the Consti- 
tution because it is the Avork of the " elders," smacks of a supercilious 
egotism Avhich it is idle to answer. There are no such analogies between 
the parties of the day. No comparisons are needed to shoAv the differ- 
ences betAveen the radicalism Avhich uproots to destroy, and the conserva- 
tism which would guard to saA^e. I Avould like to knoAV the difference in 
spirit between the radicalism of secession, which contemned the constitu- 
tional majority and set up for itself on slavery principles, and the radical- 
ism which noAV defies the people's will to set up for itself on anti-slavery 
ideas. 

This radical party of the gentleman has been in poAver G51 days — 
since the 4th of March, 1861, to the present time. What is the result? 
I do not now ask who has caused this result ; but what is our condition 
imder the agents selected at Chicago by a sectional organization, acting 
Avith those of similar radical aucavs in the South ? 1st. A confederation 
of ihirty-thrce States, to Avhich appurtenant were seven Territories, has 
been torn into two parts, under severed and belligerent governments. 2d. 



262 EIGHT YEARS IN C0NGKES8. 

From a state of concord the people of these States have been made hostile ; 
and ouc-half of the people of these States, capable under the law of bear- 
ing arms, have become consumers instead of peaceable producers of 
wealtli. 3d. That these men, numbering perhaps two millions, connected 
■with the ai-mies of the North and South, are costing the people at least 
$1,000,000 per day, which is not being replaced ; for all that is spent in 
war is, by the laws of economy, a loss to those who spend it, as a mere 
pecuniary transaction, and not counting ultimate and moral results. 4th. 
That since this Administration came into power there has been lost to 
this country, merely as a matter of business, not counting debt and taxes 
of a national or State character, at least three hundred millions in the 
destruction of property, interference with established business, increase 
iu wages, spoliation of railroads, depots, produce, corn, wheat, flour, Cols- 
ton, hay, crops, &c. 5th. That the debt of this country at this time, if all 
the liabilities not liquidated are included, and not including the eighty 
millions left by the preceding Administration, amounts to the sum of 
one thousand millions ; and by the 1st of July, 1864, will, in my judg- 
ment, amount to twenty-five hundred millions. The estimates for the 
army alone for the next year are $700,000,000. 6th. That we have now 
a system of taxation by tariff which imposes a burden on the West, to 
benefit manufacturing in New England, and pays indirectly sixty millions 
into the Treasuiy and hundreds of millions into the pockets of capitalists, 
from the consumers, who are mostly farmers of the West. 7th. That we 
have now a system of internal taxation, costing for collection some four 
millions extra, which might have been saved, and levying in one year 
$150,000,000 as interest only on a great national debt, and with an army 
of newly made oflace-holders, with exorbitant salaries. 8th. That within 
these 651 days, a party has succeeded which proposes, by legislation and 
proclamation, to break down a labor system in eleven States, of four 
millions of negroes wliose industry has been productive hitherto, worth, 
on or before the 4th of March, 1861, an average of $500 apiece, being 
in all two thousand millions of dollars ; and when this capital is destroyed, 
the objects of this pseudo-philanthropy will remain on hand. North and 
South, as a mass of dependent and improvident black beings, for whose 
care the tax will be almost equal to the war tax, before their condition 
will again be fixed safely and prosperously. 9th. That within these 651 
days, the rights of personal liberty, freedom from arrest Avithout process, 
freedom for press and speech, and the right of habeas corpus have been 
suspended and limited, and, at times, destroyed ; and in the place of resur- 
rected and promised liberty to four million blacks, we have had the de- 
struction of thjit liberty which the past 800 years have awarded to the 
Anglo-Saxon race. 10th. That for the specie currency of a few years 
ago, we have already in circulation millions of depreciated government 
promises to pay, ranging from $1,000 notes down to five cent shinplasters. 
11th. That we have the promise of a bankrupt law at this session, as the 
wholesale result of these commercial derangements. 12th. That we have 
had killed in these 651 days at least 150,000 of the best youth of the 
country on bloody fields of battle, and nearly the same number by sickness 
in camps and hospitals. 13th. That by the decision of the courts, already 
given as to the laws of this Congress — the lenrul tender and the confisca- 



CIVIL WAK. 263 

tion acts — we learn that there is a general encroachment by one cleparl>- 
ment of the government upon the other. 14th. That the Christian religion 
has been defiled by its teachers, and civilization set back a half century by 
the demoralization incident to these unhappy events. 

This is the radicalism of my colleague. Conservatism has played the 
radical so far as to uproot this gigantic upas tree, whose shade poisons 
the nation's life. It would cover over and reffesh the exposed roots of 
the goodly tree planted by the fathers, that it may grow again, and blos- 
som and bear fruit for the children. 

Is it necessary to illustrate the dilFercnces between the radicalism and 
conservatism now operating in our politics ? I will not go back to Egypt, 
or Palestine, or even to the Revolution. We have in our midst subjects 
of comparison. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], Avith 
an intellect like a demi-god, clamoring for a Dictator, and scoffing at the 
Constitution, infinite in his power of mischief, might well illustrate radi- 
calism : while the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden], with a 
heart as large as his intellect, would illustrate the opposite. One defends 
contractors, palliates peculation, and assaults investigating committees. 
Given the leadership here in this time of peril, he uses it to preach a 
salus popuJi suprema lex, as of higher sanction than his oath to the Con- 
stitution. He deals in invective, and talks of being provoked by a con- 
stitutional opposition or a modest suggestion. He would tear down the 
fabric of his government to vent his spite on an institution about which 
he has no business. During this session he voted for the dismemberment 
of Vu'ginia, and gave these radical reasons : 

" For I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the Consti- 
tution for this proceeding. This tall^ of restoring the Union as it was under the Consti- 
tution a? it is, is one of the absurdities I have heard repeated until I have become sick 
about it. This Union can never be restored as it was. There are many things which 
render such an event impossible. This. Union shall never with my consent be restored 
under the Constitution as it is, with slavery to be protected by it." 

Such language would befit the Richmond Congress. He who utters 
it, is indeed no Conservative. Turn to that other in our midst — a man 
of gray hairs — no counterfeit glory upon his head, but the glory of a long, 
useful, and patriotic career. He comes to us from his retirement in Ken- 
tucky to represent the people among whom Henry Clay lived and died, to 
counsel us in this our country's trial. He bids us manifest temperance 
in the very torrent and tempest of this anti-slavery frenzy. His course 
may arouse the sneers and ire of the radical. He may be likened to the 
sensual Israelite, the hypocritical Pharisee, or the obsequious Tory ; but the 
people know him as one who would have saved them from the war, and 
who would now lead them to an honorable peace. His conservatism would 
not pull down. It would build up. It abounds not in empty cries of hu- 
manity about the blacks. It would save this western world to constitu- 
tional freedom for the white. It looks forward to the day when the old time 
shall come again, under the old flag. It fears to let loose vengeance in 
the form of atrocious confiscations and cruel spoliation of non-combatants 
and deluded fellow-countrymen. It would give laws to war. It would 
conserve the home, the State, the institutions of the country — the Repub- 
lic ! It would never heal political grudges by mercenary contracts. It 



264: EIGHT YEAHS EST CONGRESS. 

woiild try the traitor first and confiscate afterwards. It would not confis- 
cate without conviction. It would observe the law North to punish its 
breach South. It would guard the Constitution while putting down its 
assailants. It does not for months assassinate the character of our generals 
because they do not favor radical notions. It would conserve character, 
even while it Avould protect freedom of speech and unlicensed printing. 
It loves and admires the Constitution, made at Independence Hall on the 
17th of September, 1787, and would echo tlie close of Story's Commenta- 
ries : esto perpetua ! It makes sacrifice to defend it. It votes and speaks 
against the worthless men who, in the name of a higher law and in the 
name of a military necessity, would destroy it. The difference between this 
conservatism and that radicalism, is the difference between Hyperion and 
Satyr, Gabriel and Mephistopheles, Democracy and Abolition ! The 
people, thank God, though late, perceive the gulf which separates these 
elements of blessing and of woe. 

Yet my colleague would arraign this conservatism as pro-slavery and 
treasonable ; and with that irreverence which is not infrequent with his 
class, he pretends that God is on the side of this radicalism. Why, sir, I 
speak it all reverently, God himself has been called by an abolition divine, 
a Democrat. The appellation is true, if Democracy be the synonyme of 
conservatism. Providence organizes and conserves, It is a part of his 
established order. Besides, it has been said that the voice of the people is 
the voice of God. Surely these Avaiters on Providence should heed the 
voice of the people speaking from the political Sinai. Amidst the thun- 
ders and lightnings and thick cloud, and the quaking of the mountain, the 
trumpet has sounded ; and yet, ye, unlike Israel, " have not sanctified 
yourselves, lest the Lord break forth upon ye." The trumpet voice has 
spoken : We are the people who have set you in high places. 

Thou shalt have no other source of power before you. 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any gi-aven image of ebony, before 
which to bow thyself, nor to serve it. [Laughter.] 

Tliou shalt not take the name of liberty in vain ; for thou shalt not bo 
held guiltless for such sacrilege upon personal and constitutional freedom. 

Remember the election days of October and November, to keep them 
holy. [Laughter.] 

Honor the Constitution and the Union, if you Avould have your days 
long in the land. 

Tliou shalt not kiU — in vengeance and in vain. 

Thou shalt not degrade the white race by such intermixtures as eman- 
cipation will bring. 

Thou shalt not steal, nor suffer the money of the people to be stolen by 
the army of jobbers and contractors. 

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbors, charging them 
falsely with disloyalty. 

Tliou shalt not covet thy neighbor's servants, neither his man servant, 
nor his maid servant, nor any thing which is thy neighbor's ; nor tax the 
people for their deliverance." 

Will these commandments be heeded? I fear not. Too many of the 
other side have lost their sense of responsibility by losing their offices. 
Among all my colleagues of the last Congress, upon the other side, but 



CIVIL WAE. 265 

one remains — but one — the member from the North Avest [Mr, Ashley], 
and he was elected by the divisions of the conservative force of the district. 
As with the chikh-en of Israel, the Red Sea divided and his virtues en- 
abled him to go over dry-shod. [Laughter.] My colleague [Mr. HuTcn- 
ixs], who was so kind as to Avrite my epitaph at the last session, picturing 
me as going down in a colored " sunset," had not even the approbation of 
his own party by a nomination. He will alloAV me, with tender regret, to 
borrow the apostrophe of the poet to Wilberforce, as suitable to his case : 

" Oh, shade of the fallen ! Oh, Genius sublime ! 
Great fi'iend of the Negro, from Africa's clime ; 

Alas ! how low he lies ! [Laughter.] 
Night suddenly came, and his day was done, 
His sun was set, and another sun 

Illumes the dusky sliies." [Laughter.] 

I doubt not his speech at the last session in favor of the blacks settling 
where they pleased, was the reason of his premature setting and settling. 
He should not complain. He Avas a bright light of Republicanism in the 
dark places of Ohio ; but he must remember " that all that's bright must 
fade." His demise Avas a civil necessity. The people have said to him and 
his friends — all defeated, I believe, but about a dozen — " Wayward sis- 
ters ! depart in peace." [Laughter.] Let them return to private life. It 
is their destiny. Their political graves are dug. Their Avinding sheets 
are prepared. Their gravestones are ready. Methinks I hear the clods 
fall upon their coffins at noon on the coming 4th of March. They should 
not complain. The earth itself must at last pass aAvay and be rolled up 
like a scroll. Nature, trembling and in flames, Avill one day give way. 
Let them not complain, but bow to the decree of dissolution. None knew 
them but to curse them ; none name them but to damn. Properly and phi- 
lofogically speaking, they are here as the representatives of perdition ; 
for they are lost to us. [Laughter.] Their loss will, however, be our 
gain. Their calling and election not having been made sure, they now 
seek, in the little span allotted them, to continue those political trans- 
gressions for which they are condemned already. My colleague [Mr. 
HuTCHiNs] has, however, it seems, turned practical humanitarian since the 
elections. I coAimend him for it. He is no longer a political Mrs. Jel- 
laby, manufacturing here moral pocket handkerchiefs, for the pickanin- 
nies of Hilton Head ; but he has been there, observing hoAv the young 
African learns to shoot in a-b-abs, and how the black brigade learns to 
shoot in platoons. He has, no doubt, observed Avhatthe President told the 
preachers : " That they eat, and that Avas all." Perhaps he might tell us 
hoAV many thousands, under the humanitarian regime, Ave have already 
living at our national festive board, and singing the song : 

" Old Uncle Sara's the landlord — we eat and drink our fill. 
And the wisdom of the measure is — we pay nothing for the bill." 

The House refused us information last session as to these black pau- 
pers ; and since then they have increased and scattered over the land, until 
they number himdreds of thousands ; Ave hear of four hundred wagon 
loads in Mississippi ; several thousand in the djsti-ict of my friend from 
Illinois [Mr. Allen] ; thousands here in the District ; and for their sus- 
tenance and elevation, the overburdened people are to be taxed, while the 



266 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

families of white soldiers clamor for food in our cities. The Plouse this 
afternoon voted down the resolution of inquiry of my friend from Mary- 
land [Mr. Calyert], as to the cost of the contraband business in Caro- 
lina. I assert here that the report of the quartermaster at Beaufort, South 
Carolina, will show that for the month of September four general superin- 
tendents received $150 per month, and sixty-four other superintendents 
received $50 per month, for taking care of ninety-three negroes ! This 
report shows4S3,800 per month, being at the rate of $45,600 per annum, 
for the care of ninety-three, big and little, male and female, " free Ameri- 
cans of African descent." A thousand dollars per year would astonish a 
western farmer for such a service. Yet we are refused all information 
as to this and similar infamous abuses. But the time is near when all 
will be out. Why are these things hidden from the people ? I think my 
colleague might have given us some of his observations on this head while 
he was in the South. The consolation for this, the Executive gives tis 
when he tells our people that white men can go down and take the places 
of slaves, if they do not like having the slaves coming North to jostle and 
oust them from their places. 

I, too, like the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Richardson], am anx- 
ious to support the Executive in crushing this armed sedition in the South, 
and will support him whenever he is upon the proper path. The elections 
never meant to withdraw from him the conservative support, if he had 
pursued the policy marked out at the extra session. But the people have 
condemned the chimerical scheme of compensated emancipation which he 
has again announced, and which my colleague defends — a scheme which 
the President thinks will save the enormous outlays for the Avar, by abol- 
ishing its cavise — Slavery. How can we apply those simple Mother Goose 
Melodies of the message, that it is not so easy to pay something as noth- 
ing, oV easier to pay a large sum than a larger one — when emancipation 
will add to the larger sum, something larger still, by '' reiuvigorating the 
rebellion " ? One important question seems never to have been consid- 
ered at the White House — what if abolition does not end the Avar? If the 
fear of abohtion Avas in part the cause of the Avar, Avill abolition stop it? 
If there were any thing true in the motto, " Like cures like," this might 
be logic ; but, imfortunately, like causes produce Hke effects. It is utterly 
wild to expect that the South will disband or be reconciled or be con- 
quered by abolition ; since abolition banded them in arms against us. If 
the President make real the fears Avhich led them to arms against the 
Government, the war will be embittered, prolonged, and made more ex- 
pensive. Untold millions Avill be added as Avell for the idle pui*pose of 
turning over to the Treasury, or the Poor-house, the Africans freed from 
their masters, as to pay for the slaves Avhen freed. But Ave are told the 
integrity of the Union will be assured ; and the gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania [Mr. Stea^ens] has introduced resolutions looking to this end. 
The import of his resolutions is confined to the unity and indivisibility of 
the Union. The second and fourth propositions are all included in the 
first. The second expresses the stigma Avhich ought to be fixed on him Avho 
Avould violate the national integrity, which is asserted in the first ; and 
the fourth expresses the resolve never to have that integrity broken " in 
two." But, sir, there is carefully omitted all expression against destroy- 



CIVIL WAE. 267 

ing or impairing our Government as established by the Constitution, with, 
its present departments and its present local, State, and Federal relations. 
Members can vote for those resolutions, yet be in favor of thoroughly chang- 
ing these relations. The gentleman can defend for ever the imiiy of the 
United States, its territory and government, yet insidiously favor a sys- 
tem of centralized power. A dictatorship has already been heralded by 
him here ; and it is not inconsistent with these resolutions. Every inch 
of our domain might remain under our flag, yet that flag might be made 
the emblem of a new and odious political system. The framers of the 
Constitution admonished us that if we should crush out the States, though 
the territory might remain, yet our liberties would be lost. The unity of 
a parcel of provinces, held by a martial iron grip, or tethered by prison 
bounds, is not the imity of the American Constitution. In a unity like 
that, with the States eclipsed, how could you make a Senate, an electoral 
college, or a President? Strike out the planets, and you have no system. 
He is an idiot who thinks our geography ought to be preserved at the 
price of our freedom. Do you want to reproduce the alliance of Ireland 
with England ; Venetia with Austria ? How will you hold it ? By large 
armies at enormous cost ? How, in case of foreign war, could you pre- 
serve such a Union ? Even our territories grow restive imder Federal 
rule, and clamor to be States in their nonage. Such a scheme of military 
satrapies, menacing our northern liberty and leading to endless intrigue, 
it is idle and criminal to contemplate. The people will have none of it. 
They have thus instructed us in thunder tones, at the recent elections. 
They desire no other form or fact of government than such as the Consti- 
tution gives ; no other flag than that which has all the stars in equal 
lustre, and no black, interpolated between the red, white, and blue ! 

, Doubtless this popular will has reached the gentleman from Pennsyl- 
vania. Last session he began with a bill, which proposed by unconstitu- 
tional legislation to change local interests from State to Federal control. 
Now he preserves, as to that, a discreet silence ; and only proposes a 
unity of territory and government. The people demand the territory as it 
was, the Government as it is, and no meddling with the area of the one, 
or the functions of the other, by any party, with any force, by any laws, 
or for any purpose, in the interest of any species of philanthropy, or for 
the benefit of any race, red, white, or black ! 

But, sir, I do not complain that the gentleman has omitted in his reso- 
lutions any expression as to preserving the rights, equality, and dignity of 
the States under the Constitution. Who would believe that svich expres- 
sions were sincere, after the vote of the gentleman on the 21st of July 
last for a resolution of that kind, offered by the gentleman from Kentucky 
[Mr. Crittenden] ? The gentleman from Pennsylvania is no hypocrite. 
The time for pretences has gone by. The masquerade is over. lie will 
drag no unpleasant corpse of memory about with him. Great souls care 
not for consistency. The Crittenden resolutions are in the dead past with 
him. The State suicide doctrine is now openly avowed. The Constitu- 
tional guarantees to personal liberty and private property are set at naught. 
The purpose so long hinted at and indirectly attempted, to abolish slavery 
by Federal legislation or Executive proclamation, has become the shibbo- 
leth of a party and the avowed object of the war. It would not have done to 



2G8 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

have avowed this purpose at the beginning of the war. As has been said 
by the "Atlantic Monthly," the organ of the abolition dilettanti in Boston, 
" The opposition to the Southern secession took its first form as a rally 
by all parties to the defence of the Constitution, the maintenance of the 
Union. For any anti-slavery zeal to have attempted to divert the aroused 
patriotism of the land to a breach of one of its fundamental constitutional 
provisions would have been treacherous and futile. The majority of our 
enlisted patriotic soldiers would have laid down their arms. If the lead- 
ings of Providence shall direct the thickening strife into an exterminating 
crusade against slavery, doubtless our patriots will Avait on Providence. 
But we could not have started in our stern work, avowing that as an object 
of our own." The war began for the holy object of national salvation, by 
the defence of the Constitution. The eflbrt is now made to end it as a dis- 
graceful crusade against slavery, betraying the patriotism of the land and 
mocking the hopes of mankind. It began for the noblest purpose ; unless 
restored by the popular voice, now assuming its olden tone again, it will 
end in diabolical and merciless extermination of territory, property, States, 
Government, and Union. 

It is not my purpose now to condemn or discuss the acts of the last 
session. The nation has passed upon them ; and there is no need of reso- 
lutions or speeches to explain their action. If tlie^ gentleman thought by 
introducing his resolutions, that he could discover any lack of national 
feeling, any sympathy with this unnatural rebellion, or any desire here to 
have this nation changed in polity, symmetry, or geography, he was mis- 
taken. If the President, in his message, thought that his argument in 
favor of the physical union of these States was needed to teach the peo- 
ple true views or new views, he was mistaken. The meaning of the late 
elections is, that no separation of thsse States can ever be permitted. 
The people have registered their oaths at the ballot-boxes, that no infraction 
of the Constitution shall be suffered. They will have unity without the aid 
of such counsels. They will have their ancient and written charter of 
liberties, in spite of all attempts to despoil them. There was no need of 
such resolutions ; there was need of other resolutions, voted down by the 
other side ; resolutions to stop irresponsible and arbitrary arrests ; reso- 
lutions against changing the form of our government ; resolutions against 
Avholcsale and expensive philanthropic experiments, which tend to destroy 
the moral, religious, political, and physical substance and unity of the 
nation. 

I know the impression has been created among the weaker "portion of 
the now weaker party, that the late elections are somehow an expression 
in favor of secession. If this were true, what a message of encourage- 
ment it Avould be to the rebellion ! Those who circulate libels upon the 
people of the North, either cannot have the sense to perceive their effect, 
or are regardless of the truth. If it were true, how pitiful would be the 
condition of tliis nation ! Tiie rebels find no such encouragement in these 
elections. But the Richmond " Examiner" of November 21 does find in 
tlie " policy of tlic radical party North that Avhich alone could have eradi- 
cated the deep-rooted sentiment of Union from the Southern bosom." It 
docs find " that tlie radical party have pursued a policy which has con- 
solidated Southern sentiments and united our [their] people as one man 



CIVIL WAR. 2G9 

in support of the war." Such was the belief of the people as to the efiect 
of radicalism ; and hence the result in Ohio and the Northwest. At the 
East, let that noble champion, the governor elect of New York, speak as 
to the significance of the election in that State. In his speech, before the 
election, at Brooklyn, Horatio Seymour said : 

" Now, when the men of the South made the bayonet and the sword the arbiter (they 
elected, and not we); when they and not we determined to settle it by blood, the 
sword, so far as the present is concerned, must be the arbiter ; and in our strong ri^lit 
arm it shall strike vigorous and true blows for the Ufe of our country, for its institutions, 
and for its flag. Now let me say this to the higher law men of the North, and to the higher 
law men of the South, and to the whole world that looks on as witnesses to the mighty 
events transpiring in this country, that this Union shall never be severed ; no, never. 
Whatever other men may say, as for the conservative people of this country, and as for 
myself as an individual — let other men say and think what they please — as for the divis- 
ion of this Union, and the breaking up of that great natural aUianca which is made by 
nature and by nature's God, I never will consent to it, no, never, as long as I have a voice 
to raise or a hand to fight for this our glorious land." 

The Executive message as to the indivisibility of the United States, 
and the resolutions of the gentleman, are but the feeble echo of this stal- 
wart cry of the people : "■ That this Union shall never be severed — no, 
never. The natural alliance made by nature and nature's God, shall never 
be broken — never." It was because the people feared this, that they have 
hurled so many of you from your seats here. The epitaph upon this 
Congress, which with a glad prophetic grace I had the honor to pencil for 
your political sepulclires at the last session, will be carved in that enduring 
marble which will be at once the grave of sedition and the monument of 
loyalty ! 

It has been asserted that the people have condemned this administra- 
tion because there was not a vigorous prosecution of the war. The dis- 
missal of General McClellan was justified because, as it was alleged, he 
had not dash or movement enough to satisfy the electors of the country. 
Facts, in letters and despatches which are yet to transpire, Avill show : 1st. 
That this is a mere pretext ; and, 2d. That there were other reasons for 
the dismissal. My distinguished and sagacious friend from Illinois [Mr. 
RiCHiVRDSOx] inferred that the real reason for that dismissal was, that 
McClellan did not agree with the emancipation and other radical schemes 
of the cabinet. I assert here as a fact, which I do know, and which con- 
firms the inferences of my friend, that the President Avas, about the mid- 
dle of July, informed distinctly of the mode by which and the principles 
upon which General McClellan intended the war to be conducted and the 
Union saved.* lie was advised that McClellan disapproved of any infrac- 
tion of the laws of civilized and Christian warfare ; that he disapproved 
of arbitrary arrests in places where the insurrection did not prevail ; that 
he did not contemplate any seizure of private property for the support of 
the army, or for punishing and desolating the region invaded ; but that he 
earnestly desired that the war should be carried on as a duel between 
organized armies, and not against non-combatants ; that tlie institutions of 
the States should be protected ; that no proclamation of freedom, incens- 

* This reference is to the famous Harrison Bar letter, which afterwards appeared, 
and which General McClellan had before this speech read to Gov. Crittenden and myself. 



2Y0 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

ino" a servile race to indiscriminate massacre of helpless whites, and in- 
viting the destruction of unofiending blacks, should be permitted ; in fine, 
that wherever it was possible, the military should be subordinate to the 
civil authority, and the Constitution alone should be the guide and glory 
of heroic sacrifice. This plan did not suit radicalism. It was not obnox- 
ious to the President in the summer, but, somehow, it became so in the 
fall ; and hence the General of the Potomac suddenly became unskilled 
in the art of war. His science in creating and inspiring an army after 
Bull Run was forgotten. His grand movement and splendid fighting be- 
fore Richmond were ignored. His attempt to take Richmond was belittled, 
although he pleaded, as if the life of the nation hung on it, for reenforce- 
ments, without which he made no promise and had no hope of success. 
His superb battles in Maryland, his salvation of Washington from the blun- 
ders of Pope, or those over him, were conveniently slighted. It was pre- 
tended that he did not move fast enough after the battle of Antietam ; that 
he was abundantly supplied, but failed to pursue the defeated enemy. 
Time Avill show who are to blame for failing to supply the army at that 
critical time. Such pretests wUl hardly stand before the official records 
which will be published. At the time when McClellan was dismissed, he 
was moving his immense army more than ten miles a day. His cavalry 
were driving the enemy before them, and his infantry and artillery were 
pushing them back from the frowning gaps of the Blue Ridge. His 
movements were as fast as prudence, in such a situation, warranted. 

No, sir, this removal of the general, whose genuine patriotism and 
skilful genius had inspired the army with enthusiasm, was a sacrifice to 
appease the Ebony Fetich. But he was displaced for Burnside. True ; and 
he told his army to stand by Burnside as they had by him. And Burn- 
side had told us that McClellan was " an honest, Christian-like, and con- 
scientious man, with the soundest head and clearest military perception 
of any man iu the United States." Fatal words ! They have in them 
the ultimate fate of Burnside. Let us pray for his success fervently, as 
he, no doubt, has prayed for the presence of McClellan during the past 
eventful week. But let us watch as we pray ; for he too will be brought 
to the stone of jasper, another sacrifice to the Mumbo Jumbo of abolition. 
Whal^have we gained by McClellan's removal? Celerity of movement? 
A better base of operations? Nearness to Richmond? Supplies by 
water, and a point d'appui for gunboats? Or, suppose we conquer at 
Fredericksburg, will not our army at last be compelled to return to James 
River, as the only base from which operations can succeed against Rich- 
mond — that point from which McClellan was dragged, despite his cry of 
despair, which seemed almost to forebode the destruction of the Republic? 

In the vicissitudes of this war the Administration will be compelled 
to resort to McClellan's plans and the conservative policy. Unless this be 
done the war will fail, and a disadvantageous peace may result, for almost 
any peace will be hailed as better than the war as it is now conducted. The 
war must be carried on under, and not over the Constitution. AVhenthat 
course is resumed, the patriotic North will respond as it has before re- 
sponded. The conservative me«ibers of the next Congress will demand 
such a return. The President will find that there will be repi'escntatives 
here who mean to save their institutions and rebuild the Union. 



CIVIL WAE 271 

This paiTot cry that these elections indicate a sympathy with the 
Southern rebellion has been iterated for party purposes at home. It was 
not manufactured for foreign consumption. It did harm abroad. "Well 
might Mr. Seward, with more truth than is usual to diplomatic finesse, 
write a chapter to counteract the bad effect of such falsehoods. On the 
10th of November last he advised Mr. Adams at London : 

" That while there may be men of doubtful political wisdom and virtue in each party, 
and while there may be differences of opinion between the two parties as to the measures 
best calculated to preserve the Union and restore its authority, yet it is not to be infeiTcd 
that either party, or any considerable portion of the people of the loyal States, is disposed 
to accept disunion under any circumstances, or upon any terms. It is rather to be under- 
stood that the people have become so confident of the stability of the Union that partisan 
combinations are resuming their sway here, as they do in such cases in all free countries. 
In this country, especially, it is a habit not only entirely consistent with the Constitution, 
but even essential to its stability, to regard the Administration at any time existing as dis- 
tinct and separable from the Government itself, and to canvass the proceedings of the one 
without the thought of disloyalty to the other." 

Who is there on the opposite side who dare echo the sincere tribute of 
Mr. Seward to the loyal Democracy? Who of you has had the gener- 
osity to distinguish between sustaining the Government and criticizing the 
Administration ? Who among you does the Secretary reckon of " doubtful 
political wisdom and virtue " ? Certainly it is he who would counsel a 
war against slavery ; for he said to Mr. Adams, on the 17th of February, 
1862, in speaking of the crusade against slavery : 

" To proclaim the crusade is unnecessary, and it would even be inexpedient, because 
it would deprive us of the needful and legitimate support of the friends of the Union who 
are opposed to slavery, but who prefer union with slavery to disunion without slavery. 
Does France or does Great Britain want to see a social revolution here, with all its hor- 
rors, like the slave revolution in St. Domingo ? Are these pow-ers sure that the country 
or the world is ripe for such a revolution, so that it must certainly be successful ? What 
if, inaugurating such a revolution, slavery, protesting against its ferocity and inhumanity, 
should prove the victor ? " 

Again, on the 5th of July, 1862, he says : 

" It seems as if the extreme advocates of African slavery and its most vehement op- 
ponents were acting in concert together to precipitate a servile war— the former by mak- 
bg the most desperate attempts to overthrow the Federal Union, the latter by demanding 
an edict of universal emancipation as a lawful and necessary, if not, as they say, the only 
legitimate way of saving the Union." 

He accuses, therefore, every one who would pervert the war from its 
primitive and loyal purpose into an anti-slavery crusade, as depriving the 
country of its loyal friends. He accuses all such of aiding to bring on a 
social revolution, like that of St. Domingo, involving all its ferocity and' 
inhumanity. If this indictment be true, who will escape condemnation? 
The vote the other day to sustain the proclamation will show. When the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania was framing his crimination against those 
who would propose peace on the basis of separatiou, which inculpates no 
one on this side, did he know whereof he was accused by the Premier of 
the Administration ? The people have tried and condemned all such as are 
thus accused. But while those who are approved by them never wiU 
" accept disunion under any circumstances or upon any terms, " still it is 
nevertheless true that these elections do indicate a profound unrest among 
the people, as to the continuance of this war on the line of policy now 



272 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGRESS. 

about to be pursued. They do indicate tbat in the popular mind there is 
a hope yet alive, and efforts yet to be tried, perhaps not opportune just 
now, to adjust the causes of strife and bridge over this abyss, below which 
is surging the torrent of blood. They do approve of the President's re- 
mark, that after all our fighting, we must at last make some accommoda- 
tions. The London Times says truly, that " in the result of these elections 
v,-e think we see a hope that the word ' compromise ' Avill soon come into 
general use on the other side of the Atlantic," The President himself 
seems, in an oblique way, to have taken the hint, and his late message 
Avrites out in plain hand this once-honored word — Compromise. 

But how shall we begin the Avork of compromise? What is honora- 
able and just, under present circumstances? Is it true, as is alleged, that 
the Southern States under certain circumstances are willing to return to 
the Union? Is it true that the President is thus advised? I know not ; 
but if so, what sacrifices can be made to restore the Union ? Or, indeed, 
ought any talk of compromise to be held, while the guns of the rebellion 
thunder along the Rappahannock, or our navies meet with resistance down 
the Mississippi? Shall we wait the results of the present movements? 
Shall we then, in case of failure, wait till another year? Shall we talk 
of compromise before our debt reaches the estimate of Mr. Chase, on the 
1st of June next, and towers up to $1,122,297,403.24? Or shall we wait 
till the year after, when it shall still mount up to $1,744,595,596.80? Or 
still more nearly, on the next year's day, when the Commander-in-Chief 
shall have declared all persons held as slaves in any State or designated 
part of a State then in rebellion, to be then, thenceforward, and forever 
free ? If that grand panacea fail, shall we still wait until another million 
shall be added to our army ? Another hundred thousand to our hospitals ? 
Another hundred thousand fresh-made graves upon our soil? Another 
three hundred millions of loss, by destruction of public enterprises, private 
property, and by the wholesale derangement of the social, business, and 
labor systems of the land? Or will compromise be more acceptable, 
North and South, if possible at all, when another half million of slaves 
are freed by the friction and abrasion of the Avar ? Or will it be when 
slave labor is cnfi-anchised and exported to regions where it Avill never add 
a dollar to the national treasury or to the general wealth? Or when the 
four million slaves, being freed by Avar, legislation, confiscation, or procla- 
mation — which my colleague [Mr. IIuxcniNs] thinks may cause some 
slight inconvenience — shall seek the North Star, and by an exodus, already 
great and increasing, shall disturb the relations of labor in the free States, 
until a new irrepressible conflict shall arise between white and black la- 
bor? Or shall the Avar go on, without effort to compromise, Avith no 
attempt at arbitrament, until extermination results? Will you com- 
promise Avith desolation and call it peace ? Will you glory in the unity 
and indivisibility of a territory denuded by the besom of Avar ? When — 
when — Representatives, is peace honorable, and compromise just? Are 
these " forces " to " endure " so long as there is a cotton and rice field in 
Carolina, or a sugar plantation in Louisiana, imscathed by war or unset- 
tled by free labor? If the day of compromise be postponed till then, 
may not the Federal sceptre be a barren one in your gripe ? Or may not 
other schemes of union — economic, political, and geographical — and other 



CIVIL WAE. 273 

ruinous projects of secession still further distract our country? These 
problems may well be considered by the loyal and patriotic. Let us be 
wise in time, before worse evils overtake and overwhelm us. 

I am one of those who still cling to the hope of union. At the 
beginning of the war, there were but few secessionists j7er se. It was 
the fear that the Northern States Avere hopelessly abolitionizcd, that 
overcame the loyalty of the majority Soiith, and united them against 
us. The very excesses of power in this Congress, its attempt to pervert 
the war, its aggressions on personal freedom and constitutional right, 
have extinguished the fire of radicalism and relit the old beacon which led 
us onward in imity and to prosperity ! The result of the elections will as- 
sist to restore the Union. The reaction in the South will soon begin. 
The elements of discontent North which have helped to rescue power from 
arrogant and imbecile men, will Avork with more force in the South. 
Cotton has lost his sceptre. His throne is in ashes. Privateering, so 
truculently blazoned by Slidell, in the Senate, as the avenger of Southern 
wrongs, has proved itself but a toothless harpy. Foreign intervention 
will never be allowed. North or South. The currency, trade, and estab- 
lished order South, all deranged, are powerful levers, now prying the 
loosened stones into their old places. For such a work there is a fulcrum 
deep in the heart of the people, which neither radicalism nor secession 
can whoUy disturb ! The very failures of both armies to make decisive 
victories, notwithstanding the extraordinary vigor and splendid heroism 
of our soldiers in the field, and the fabulous expenditure of money and 
men, will assist the consummation of our hopes. We have expended, in 
two years, men and money enougli, had we been united, to have added a 
dozen Indias to our conquering chariot. Money enough has been filched 
by corrupt contractors, treasures enough have been wasted on political 
favorites, to have belted the globe with our flag, and added the rest of the 
Continent to our empire. But all has been as yet in vain ; for there stood 
and yet stands between the people and their hope this blighting black de- 
mon of radicalism, unwise beyond all that is written in history, and power- 
less for every thing except mischief and malevolence. Against its Satanic 
" pressure," brought to bear upon the President by the mad cabal of 
zealots, the people have protested. You may discard their warning in 
mockery ; you may, in spite, remove the generals they indorse and love ; 
you may persevere in your radical and destructive work ; yoti may for a 
few weeks more press your doctrine that the States are in rebellion, and 
therefore have committed felo dc se, and are to be stricken from the roll 
of the Union ; you may strive to legislate down the Constitution ; but 
your days are numbered ! I see the death sweat on your brow ! In these 
resolutions, in the indemnity bill passed the other day, and in the crazed 
speculations of my colleague, which still linger from the past session, and 
in the bill of the member from Pennsylvania for a hundred thousand black 
soldiers, I hear the death-rattle in your throats. You will pass away ; 
and you will only be remembered to point a political moral, and to teach, 
as Robespierre and his radical times teach its, that anarchs and destruc- 
tives have their uses in the political world, as the hurricane and pestilence 
in the physical world. The very attempt to foil the popular will, you are 
now making, will make your condemnation more terrible. There is 
18 



274 EIGHT TEAitS IN CONGRESS. 

something insurrectionary, says Arnold, the historian, in the attempt to 
restrain the popular will. Had 30U and the Executive bowed to the popu- 
lar verdict, as in England, under a less liberal system, the rulers ever do, 
posterity might have embalmed you to a little immortality for that act of 
gi'ace. But no ! this thunder tone of dissatisfaction with your conduct is 
seized upon and avowed by some here in my presence, as the very reason 
why, now, in the brief time of your power, you should enact further mis- 
chief. 

You had, and would yet have, the whole conservative force in a war 
to overthrow the organization of the Southern Confederacy. You were 
not content with that. We were united on that, but you were determined 
to divide the North. By culpable and treacherous divergence from the 
plain path marked out by the Crittenden resolution, you are determined 
to make this a war against populations, against civilized usage, to over- 
throw State institutions and blot out State boundaries, and, by defiance of 
the organic law, to defeat the cause of the nation, by making the old 
Union impossible. 

But mark ! you will not succeed. The array itself will never consent 
to degrade itself by becoming superior to the civil power. You cannot 
use it to break through the sacred barriers which protect the Constitution. 
Nor will the people ever consent to give proclamations the force of law ; 
for even in England that has been held to be a surrender of the liberty of 
the nation to usurpation. The people are informed of those traditional 
privileges which Avere secured by their ancestors. Beginning even before 
Magna Charta, written in the "Apologies" and Bills of Eight of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, enacted thirty-two times from Runnymede until the 
Declaration of Right in 1688, they are yet preserved in the fundamental 
law of the country. At the recent election the people asked, as Went- 
worth once questioned a certain dispensing power in England, " whether 
there be any council that can make, add to, or diminish from the laws of 
this realm?" They ask now in this our House of Commons, .as they will 
ask more proudly in the next, whether the spirit yet lives which resisted 
ship money, the dispensing power of the Stuarts, and arbitrary imprison- 
ment, and which demanded trial upon accusation and by a jury whenever 
the subject was seized by the sovereign. They know that there is no com- 
pensation for yielding these rights of personal security, without which aU 
other rights are useless. This is a part of the meaning of the elections ; 
and whether in your evanescent power you regard it or not, the people 
are upon the throne again, and woe to him who passes beyond the limits 
marked by the still swelling tide of an indignant and aroused people. 

But, is it asked : " Do you want the Avar to stop iu order to divide the 
Union?" Tlie people have answered as Seymour answered, as I answer 
you here : No ! But they want the war carried on, as all civilized wars 
arc carried on, with a view to peace and union, and not with a view 
to the aggravation and prolongation of hostilities. I affirm on the best 
human and divine authority, that all objects of human eifort, even war, 
should contribute to human happiness and peace. If this war have any 
other object, then it is abhorred of God and man ; and every dollar and 
life sacrificed would be criminal waste. Am I answered that this war is 
an exception to other wars ? If so, why ? Because it Avas begun in re- 



CrVTL WAR. 275 

bellion ? Let Vattel, ia his 18th chapter of his 3d book, answer ! His 
answer meets the very case. He stands above our stormt'ul passions and 
gives the law of wisdom for our guidance. In that chapter he maintains 
these propositions : 

1st. That a sovereign is bound to observe the common laws of war 
toward his rebellious subjects who have openly taken up arms against him. 
He derives this rule from the relations the sovereign bears toward his sub- 
jects. Having derived his right to rule from them, he is to watch over 
their welfare. But what if his subjects take up arms to deprive him of 
the supreme authority ? Then, if the evil spreads so as to infect the ma- 
jority of tlie people of a city or province, and gains such strength that even 
the sovereign is no longer obeyed, it becomes an insurrection. His con- 
duct toward the insurgents should be consonant to justice and salutary to 
the State. Vattel declares that subjects who rise against the sovereign 
deserve severe punishment ; yet even in this case, on account of the num- 
ber of the delinquents, he holds that clemency becomes a duty in the sov- 
ereign. Shall he depopulate a city or desolate a province in order to pun- 
ish her rebellion ? Any punishment, however just in itself, which embraces 
too great a number of persons, becomes an act of downright cruelty. He 
illustrates these doctrines by referring to Henry the Great, of France, who 
gained a nation by his clemency, and to the Duke of Alva, who lost the 
United Provinces to the King of Spain by his cruelty. The time will 
come for the President to exhibit the magnanimity of the one or the in- 
humanity of the other. 

Again : I beg the House to listen to the wisdom of this great publicist, 
who holds, as he would doubtless have held with us of the last Congress 
who attempted by seasonable concession to avert this war, " That the 
safest, and at the same time the most just method of appeasing sedition, 
is to give the people satisfaction. And if there exists no reason to justify 
the insurrection (a circumstance which never happens), even in such a 
case it becomes necessary to grant an amnesty where the offenders are 
numerous." But, as if this rebellion was before his mind, he selects the 
case of a republic, divided into two opposite parts, and where both parts 
are in arms. This he calls a civil war. " The sovereign," he says, 
" never fails to call those in insurrection re&e/s; but when the rebels have 
acquired sufficient strength to give the sovereign effectual opposition, and 
to oblige him to carry on the war against them according to the established 
rules, he must submit, necessarily, to the term civil war. In this case 
there is no common judge between the two parties. They are thencefor- 
ward two separate bodies, two distinct societies. Though one of the par- 
ties may have been to blame in breaking the unity of the State and resist- 
ing the lawful authority, they are not the less divided in fact. But who 
shall judge them? On earth they have no common superior. They 
stand, therefore, in precisely the same predicament as two nations who 
engage in a contest." 

2d. This being the case, the common laws of war, the maxims of hu- 
manity, moderation, and honor, are to be observed. For a stronger 
reason, he says, ought such laws to be observed by two incensed parties, 
lacerating their common country. Indeed, the very instance which Vatr 
tel gives, of the sovereign hanging his prisoners as rebels, has akeady oc- 



276 EIGHT TEARS IN CONGRESS. 

curred with us in Missouri, and we are threatened, as he anticipates, with 
reprisals and retaliation, Avhich we have no power to resist. But for these 
laws, the war would thus become every day more cruel, horrible, and de- 
structive. What, then, is the conclusion at which he arrives ? 

3d. Whenever a numerous body of men think they have a right to re- 
sist the sovereign, and feel themselves in a condition to appeal to the sword, 
there ought to be left open the same means as between two nations for 
preventing the war being carried to outrageous extremities, and for the 
restoration of Peace. 

If these maxims of the great jurist be the voice of reason, conscience, 
and the civilized world, this Govermaent is under the necessity to practise 
moderation, justice, and clemency toward the insurgents. We have no 
right, as Mr. Seward thought in February, to inaugurate any system of 
emancipation which will lead to the atrocities and inhumanities of slave 
insurrection. Such a course, as Mr. Seward held, will only " reinvigorate 
the rebellion." In such a contest there is not an attribute of the Al- 
mighty which can take sides with us. As well fire the hospitals of the 
sick, and the libraries of the learned ; as well pillage the homes of the 
widow and the heritage of the orphan ; as well refuse the flag of truce or 
the exchange of prisoners ; as well fire upon the former and hang the lat- 
ter ; as well poison the weapons of war or the wells of water ; as well re- 
fuse the ofiaces appointed by necessity to soften the rough usages of war, 
as to inspire or set on foot a systena leading to servile massacre. Nay, 
by tfie same reason that we Avould abstain from these horrible means 
which intensify sectional hate, and reinvigorate rebellion, we must leave 
open the same means which two nations at war ever have, for the resto- 
ration of peace. 

Now I inquire, first, into the reason of these maxims ; secondly, into 
the means which are open to belligerent nations ; and what, if any, means 
are open to this nation for the restoration of peace. 

First. The maxims quoted spring from the desirableness of ending 
hostilities. As in war no one can enjoy quietly his rights, in peace he 
has that privilege ; and if controverted, he can rationally discuss them 
with a view to the remedy. Peace is the natural and best state of man. 
All agree to that. Under its protection, and through its amenities, that 
intercourse is secured which is most beneficial, economically and socially, 
and Avhich tends to the highest advancement of man. Passion produces 
war ; reason keeps and restores peace. It is the bounden duty of the 
Government to seek peace with the people. The beatitudes are promised 
to the peacemaker. God smiles on him, and gives him a double blessed- 
ness in this life and in the Hfe to come. Poets may sing the glories of 
heroic achievements, 

" But like a bell with poleran sweet vibrations 
I hear the voice of Christ say — Peace." 

If it were now possible that the French Emperor, without intrench- 
ing upon our prerogative as a proud and independent State, could succeed 
in restoring, by his friendly mediation, tlic Government and the Union as 
it was ten years ago, wjien his coup d'etat seemed to destroy the liopes 
of llepublican France, and to become the peacemaker and " Union 



CIVIL WAE. 277 

savei'" of this distracted land, the beauty of the act would whiten his 
whole life, and even make mankind forget the fatal 2d of December, 
1852. He Avould deserve the eulogy of the great writer to whom I have 
referred ; and become greater at that moment than in the midst of his 
most splendid conquests in the Crimea and in Italy, wliich he is about to 
illustrate in bronze upon a new Arch of Triumpli in his capital ! So de- 
BU'able is the return of peace, so divine the office of peacemaker, that 
mankind joins with Vattel in picturing Augustus shutting the temple 
of Janus, and giving peace to the Universe, and adjusting the disputes 
of kings and nations, as the greatest of mortals, and as it were a god 
upon earth ! 

Second. What are the means left open to belligerents by the laws of 
civil war ? I do not speak now of a condition of things not yet apparent 
in this country, when one of the parties is reduced by war to sue for 
peace ; or where both are weary of the war, and thoughts of accommo- 
dation are entertained, and peace steps in and puts a period to the war. 
I assume now a condition of things in which, upon our part, as we voted 
the other day, our resources are greater than ever, and our spirit is unflag- 
ging ; and on the other part, that the resources of the rebellion are yet for 
a time sufhcient to harass and withstand the Federal authority in a large 
part of the immense area to be rescued from the rebellion. I speak now 
of a condition, in which an armed force of over 700,000 men are upon 
our side, and 400,000 on the other ; the one having the advantage of re- 
sources, and the other the advantage of being near their own homes ; and 
v,^hen the spirit of each is but little less than it was one year ago. I speak 

I also upon the hope and hypothesis that the influence of the late elections 
will greatly abate the apprehensions and mitigate the aversion of the mass 
of the Southern people against the Xorth ; and that a less revengeful 
spirit, developed in these elections, prev^ails at the North. Thus circum- 
stanced, and even while we omit no martial or naval exertion on behalf 
of the Government, where is the initiative for peace? I assume that it is 
not necessary that the war should stop to prepare for peace. The late 
war with Great Britain went on and battles were fought even while our 
commissioners wei'e at Ghent, and after peace was celebrated. An ar- 
mi'-fice is not an indispensable preliminary to negotiation. In the proposi- 
tions which I submitted more tlian a year ago to this House, I proposed 
to increase the armament of army and navy, even while I would have 

d sent commissioners from the loyal States to the disloyal ; not to recognize 
or treat with tiie Confederate govei*nment, but to meet commissioners from 
the States South, which are still and ever a legal and indestructible entity, 
and with whom alone we could then have conferred. Neither is it indis- 
pensable to the beginning of negotiations, that the executives at Washing- 
ton and Richmond should confer. 

Although publicists have held that the same power which has the right 
to make war and direct its operations, has naturally that likewise of 
concluding peace ; yet by our system of government, it would be impossi- 
for our Executive, notwithstanding the maxim I liave quoted, to begin_ 
negotiations or conclude them by treating with the Confederate govern- 
ment at Richmond. Neither has the President of the United States any 
power to declare war or conclude peace. He could not if he would, he 



278 EIGHT YEAES EST C0NGKE8S. 

dare not if he could, make a treaty of peace which would alienate an 
acre of our territory, or release a State or a citizen from the obligation due 
to the Federal Government. However disadvantageous war may be, yet 
there is no authority to conclude a peace, except in pursuance of the Con- 
stitution. It has been held that a sovereign, when the State is reduced 
to any calamitous exigency, may determine by what sacrifices he will 
purchase peace ; but in this country, where the written Constitution is 
the guide of duty, there can be no exigency which would authorize a 
breach of that fundamental law upon which repose all our interests. 
Better the President should suffer the tortures of Regulus, than usurp a 
power to make a peace not in accordance Avith the Constitution and the 
integrity and indivisibility of the Republic. From no quarter and by no 
election has there been any expression which looks to a peace based on 
the separation of this country into two nations. No mediation or inter- 
vention from any foreign power, based upon such a suggestion, would be 
tolerated for a moment. If Europe intervened for such a purpose, the 
war would become continental. Any mediation or intervention would 
be spurned which would obstruct the relations of the Union, either by 
embarrassing our arms or our negotiations. But, are we to be shut off 
in the future from all hope of stopping the effusion of blood ? If the 
South would be content with the Constitution faithfully administered, as 
they have shown by adopting it as the basis of their own establishment ; 
and if they are aggrieved only by alleged and apprehended infractions of 
it, to the detriment of their local systems ; why may we not hereafter 
come together, upon that Constitution as the basis of an amicable adjust- 
ment, and by such an amendment of it, made in pursuance of its own 
provisions, as will assure to the .South perfect immunity from unjust inter- 
meddling v/ith their local rights, reestablish the Government, while we 
reintegrate its territory? The difficulty is in making the advance to 
an accommodation, as such an advance woidd be imputed to weakness. 
Moreover, the war may be persisted in from ambition, pride, and animosi- 
ty, or fi'om a desire to exterminate slavery ; and these may be obstacles 
to be surmounted. If such be our condition, then we have this rule laid 
down for us by Vattel, that " on such occasions, some common friends of 
the parties should elTcctually interpose by offering themselves as media- 
tors." It is the office of beneficence ; and it is held to be the indispensa- 
ble duty of those who have the means of performing it with success. 
Such a mediation derogates nothing from that Constitution ab intra — 
that perfect autonomy of the State, which is by all public law and by the 
divine order guaranteed to every independent nation. 

This brings me to the third resolution of the gentleman from Penn- 
sylvania, denouncing all mediation and intervention from abroad. The 
Monroe doctrine never had a stronger reason tlian now for its enforce- 
ment. Intervention in our affairs (!an never be alloAved. It is a vague 
term, and has had u variety of interpret alions by tlie selfish and ambitious 
powers of P^lurope, struggling to fix the balance of power. Its opposite 
is the established princii)le of the law of nations. iVo«-intervention is 
drawn from the essential sovereignty of every nation, great and small. 
Intervention is the exception, and is only justified as an extreme measure — 
1st, when it is demanded by self-preservation ; and 2d, when some ex- 



CTVTL WAR. 279 

traordinary state of things is brought about by the crime of the Govern- 
ment. (Woolsey's International Law, p. 91.) History is full of illus- 
trations of these doctrines, running from ancient Greece to modern Italy, 
There never can be any application of them to this Government which is 
not in violation of our sovereign rights upon this continent, and which, 
if we had the power, wc would not resist by our arms. Intervention 
comes armed. It takes sides. It has ambitious designs. It is against 
our interest, tradition, history, and feeling. But mediation is ostensibly 
friendly and inoffensive. We should guard against the most silken in- 
veiglement by France or any European power ; but there is nothing ap- 
parent in the note of Drouyn de L'Huys tendering a mediation, which 
indicates any ambitious or unkind intermeddling. In the note of the 
Minister of October 30, there is nothing which looks like a mediation for 
peace at the expense of the Union. Any " pressure " upon us is expressly 
repudiated ; and the mediation is only tendered to smooth obstacles, in 
case of a wish, on our part, for such mediation. In the text of Drouyn 
de L'Huys* note, the Emperor bases his overtures on the painful interest 
with which Europe has regarded our great calamity and prodigious effu- 
sion of blood. This interest may be quickened by the idle looms of 
Lyons and the lessened market for French wines. The mission proposed 
is one which, as France feels and states, international law assigns to neu- 
trals. It is only intended to "• encourage public opinion to views of con- 
ciliation." In this tender, a scrupulous delicacy is observed against 
offending our national susceptibility against intervention. The constant 
tradition of French policy toward this country is appealed to with appa- 
rent sincerity. 

We cannot be insensible to such advances. But a spectre stands in the 
way to scare us from its consideration — France in Mexico ! Sixty thou- 
sand Chasseurs de Vincenncs, Voltigeurs de la Garde, and Chasseurs 
d'Afrique ! What are they doing there ? Has a Bonaparte — the author 
of the coup d'etat — the Emperor of that nation which fought in the Crimea 
and Italy, become scrupulous of shedding blood? If so, why do his le- 
gions throng toward the capital of Mexico to " regulate" a hostile people? 
Can humanity inspire this project of mediation in our affairs ? 

I prefer to think, knowing the difference between Mexico and this 
country, that his policy in Mexico is not intended to be hostile to us, as 
against the South ; for nothing can be more unfavorable to the dreams of 
Davis and his confederates than the establishment of a European dynasty 
on their border. Besides, France has ever been our ally. For gi'cat rea- 
sons of State, and as an essential element of the equilibrium of the Avorld, 
she helped us to establish Independence. Her blood mingled with ours to 
acquire it. Louisiana came from her hand to enlarge our domain. No 
interest in silk, wines, and cotton, no design in Mexico, ought to enter 
into her plans of mediation. Besides, if she meditates, by mediation, the 
Union of these States, she may quadruple her Chasseurs in Mexico, and 
her ensign may float from every castle in that ill-starred land ; but our 
Union, if restored, would exert its first energy in reestablishing the conti- 
nental policy of Monroe, and all her plans in Mexico would fail. There- 
fore, from the text of the French note, and its explanation since by the 
secretary of the French Minister, and being confirmed in the belief that 



280 EIGHT TEAKS IN C0NGKES8. 

under the " armistice France would have lent her aid to a restoration of 
the Union," I do not augur any present armed intervention or sinister 
motives in lier tender of mediation. Still, the best foresight may fail in 
sounding the designs of the wonderful man who now occupies St. Cloud. 
Our safety from all intervention lies, not merely in our iron-clad navy, 
not in our voluminous diplomacy, but in the determination of the people 
to throw oiF this load of rebellion. If the capacity of our rulers, in the 
conduct of our affairs, was shown to be equal to the task of regaining the 
Federal supremacy at home, we should not be menaced by European pat- 
ronage and meddling. If we are divided by radical counsels, and if we 
incite the servile race to atrocious insurrections, our revenues will be 
wasted, our Government broken, and England wiU laugh at our calami- 
ties, and Europe will intervene for our everlasting degradation. I do not 
believe that France means hostility to us in her tender of mediation. 
From my observation I believe that she is now, as she was in the days of 
Rochamljeau and Lafayette, desirous of seeing our Union perfected. She 
loves England little. Waterloo is not a myth, nor has Time bleached out 
its red memories. Our growing naval power is not pleasing to England ; 
but it is not obnoxious to France, which has ever been jealous and fearful 
of English supremacy on the sea. England refuses to join in the tender 
of mediation for the very reason that she winked at the *■' Alabama " when 
she cleared the Mersey, and now permits a thousand hammers to rivet the 
iron mail upon a score of Confederate steamers. England, whose philan- 
thropy is in a cotton pod, refused the tender of France because she does 
not care to see this Democratic Republic as a standing menace to aristoc- 
racy, and ever rivalling her upon the ocean. England does not wish to 
mediate, for she fears that if united we might be less tolerant of her bra- 
vado. She now smiles with satisfaction over the transfer of commerce 
from American to English bottoms, owing to the increase of marine insur- 
ance, created by her own breaches of neutrality. France may with Eng- 
land have some selfish reason for wishing us at peace. But France prefers 
that we should have peace and the Union ; England prefers peace and a 
separation. The one is a friend, the other an enemy. 

The friendly offices of France may, after our arms shall have had more 
decisive success and our elections have permeated the Southern mind 
with a kindlier feeling, be of great use in forwarding the only true object 
of the war, which is peace and Union. 

It is an insult to History to expect that war alone will unite us. Force 
may subdue the rebellion ; but other means must reconcile the people 
North and South. Interchange of commodities and mutual coui'tesies 
will not do it ; for separate nations, like France and England, have these 
and yet would forever remain distinct and hostile. Consanguinity alone 
will not do it. Many races, as the Gauls, Romans, Franks, and Burgun- 
dians, constitute France, and have become nationalized into one, without 
the ties of kindred. Language alone will not do it ; for Great Britain is 
one, thougli the people sing with Llewellyn in Welsh, and Burns in Scotch, 
and Shakespeare in English. The unity of a State by the principle of na- 
tionality, results from tlie unforced and spontaneous union of inclinations 
among a people. " And Hamor, and Shechem his son, communed with 
the men of the city, saying : These men are peaceable with us, therefore 



CIVIL -WAE. 281 

let them dwell in the land and trade therein ; for the land, behold, it 
is large enough for them ; let us take their daugliters to us for wives, 
and let us give them our daughters ; only herein will the men consent 
unto us to dwell with us, to be one people." A movement looking to 
this consenting of the affections will restore the Union. The sword 
must be garlanded with the olive. The bayonet alone, said Mirabeau, 
"will only establish the peace of Terror — the silence of Des^DOtism. In 
one way, and in one way only, could mediation be effective, by brin^-- 
ing together commissioners North and South, not to arrange a treaty 
of peace, not to agree upon a compromise, but to inauguiate in the 
States — in the States which are constituent elements of our Confedera- 
tion, the original fountain of power from which the Constitution derived 
its vitality — a movement looking to a national convention where, in con- 
formity with the requirements of our Constitution, there could be found 
our common judge on earth, the sovereign people of the again United 
States I I do not now undertake to say in detail what such a Convention 
ought to do. It ought to compose all our troubles in the spirit of amity ; 
and, unless we have degenerated beyond all former generations, it ought 
to evoke the spirit of 1787, and weave and plait anew that bond of Union, 
strong as the mighty interests of this nation, which are to be imbound by 
it forever. In such a convention of States, rigid justice might not be 
meted out to either party. Neither party would be condemned to humili- 
ating sacrifices, inconsistent with the future dignity and equality of the 
States. All losses could not be reimbursed ; for who could call again to 
life the thousands slain in the i^nhappy strife ? But in the spirit of Chris- 
tian brotherhood all might be arranged, the Union be started again upon 
a career of progi'ess under the old flag and with a new hope, amidst the 
shouts of a free and peacefid people, and all the States side by side, like 
the majesties of Olympus, commune kindly through all the ages of his- 
tory— 

" Self-reverent each, and reverencing each, 
Distinct in individuality. 
But like each other, oven as those who love." 



PURITANISM IN POLITICS. 

HEW ENGLAND ISMS — INTOLERANCE AND PROSCRIPTION — HER COLONIAL CUSTOMS AND LAWS — 

VIRTDES OF NEW ENGLAND EARLY PURITANISM AGAINST DEMOCRACY A POLITICAL CHURCH 

■WITHOUT A RELIGIOUS STATE — TRANSCENDENTALISM AND BRAHMINISM POLITICAL HISTORY 

OF NEW ENGLAND INVOCATION TO UNION. 

The speech which follows was not delivered in Congress, but at New 
York city, on the 13th of January, 1863, before the Democratic Union 
Association. It was reported by many of the New York papers with 
gross garbling. Its sentiments were misrepresented, and subjected to much 
acrimonious criticism in Congress. I insert it here that it may be judged 
properly. It touched the amour fropre of New England. The " Atlantic 



282 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

Review " exercised its malignant spirit by vituperating its author. Rev. 
Mr. Bceclicr replied to portions of it, at Boston ; but in his speech he ad- 
mitted what is the gist of the speech, the meanness and intolerance of a 
portion of the New England people. The New York " Tribiine," within 
the past few months, has said as much, if not more, than the writer, in 
stigmatizing a certain class in New England who have been foremost in 
obtaining the pecuniary results from the war, without contributing to 
its success. 

It should be understood that the facts presented in this speech are 
authentic. If the veil is withdrawn from the character and history of early 
New England, it is because that character and history are so frequently 
thrust into the faces of other people as the only type of what is liberal, 
humanitarian, and pious. I have endeavored to discriminate between the 
genuine devotee of Democratic and soul liberty in New England, and the 
mere pretender. In doing this I may give offence to many. But there 
will be no offence to those who have, since the war has ended, seen 
the crusade of agitation in relation to reconstruction and negro suffrage. 
That crusade has begun in Boston. Its threats of new revolution have 
been made to overawe President Johnson into the adoption of "Boston 
notions." Whether it shall succeed or fail, depends upon the firmness of 
the conservative men of other sections. 

The speech being addressed to a popular audience is perhaps overloaded 
with such demonstrations as are incident to such occasions. I give the 
report, however, as it was published : 

Gentlemen of the Young Men^s Democratic Association of Netv York : 
— If this hearty enthusiasm were before an election I could more readily 
understand it. It seems, however, that you have begun the campaign of 
1864. Let us be patient and persevering ; and if the great central States 
will stand by the West till then, as they did last fall, we may rescue the 
Government from the hands of the spoilers, and reinvigorate the national 
life from that fountain of all power, the people. [Cheers.] Gentlemen, 
a New England orator, Trislam Burges, once said, that " we were sur- 
rounded, protected, and secured by our Constitution, from the power and 
violence of the world, as some wealthy regions arc, by their own barriers, 
sheltered from the ravages of the ocean. But a small, insidious, perse- 
vering reptile may, unseen, bore through the loftiest and broadest mound. 
The water follows its path, silently and imperceptibly at first, until at 
length a breach is made ; and the ocean rushing in, flocks, and herds, and 
men are swept away by the deluge." Puritanism is the reptile which 
has been boring into the mound, whicli is the Constitution, and this civil 
war comes in like the devouring sea ! lis rushing tide of devastation will 
not be stayed until the reptile is crushed and the mound rebuilt. This 
will never be accomplished until an administration obtains control, Avhi%h, 
in the language of Governor Seymour, can grasp the dimensions and con- 



CIVIL WAE. 283 

trol the sweep of this sanguinary flood. [Cheers.] To obtain such an 
administration, the people will, unhappily, have to wait for some two 
years. Meanwhile, what new scliemes of division may further distract 
us ! My apprehension is, that before the people can tliorouglily reform 
the conduct of their government, another civil strife may be raging ; not 
the South against the North ; not slave against free States ; but llie North 
against itself. I pray God in his mercy to avert such dangers. The 
hatred, not of New England, but of its arrogant, selfish, nan*ow, and Puri- 
tan policy, now dominant in the Federal Government, will, I fear, never be 
allayed until blood is shed in our northern States. There is but one policy 
which could have stopped it ; the maintenance by the Administration of 
the policy marked out in the summer of 1861, which declared no war for 
conquest — no anti-slavery crusade. Tiiis alone united the North. This 
might have preserved that unity. But I see no hopes of a return to such 
a policy. The bigots of New England have their copyists outside, and 
the anti-slavery pressure continues. Indeed, it is questioned whether 
any policy can now restore the Union. Abolition has made the Union, 
for the present, impossible. An aroused people may strike blindly and 
madly, and the result may be the formation of new alliances among the 
States and fresh conflicts among the people. As a western man, repre- 
senting the capital of the leading State of the northwest during tliese past 
six years, I have not been unobservant of the signs in that quarter. 1 
have persistently opposed all schemes of secession and division. I yet 
oppose them. But I am far behind the impulse and sentiment of the 
West. The erection of the States watered by the Mississippi and its 
tributaries into an independent Republic, standing on its own resources, 
mineral and agricultural, with a soil so fat that if you " tickle it with a 
hoe it will laugh with a harvest " [cheers] — a connection with which 
would be sought by the South and the East, yet choosing for itself its 
cheapest and best outlet to the sea ; banded together by river and homo- 
geneity of interest — is becoming something more than a dream. It is the 
talk of every other western man. Men fall into it with a facility which 
is shocking to the olden sense of nationality. I speak of these schemes 
only to disapprove and to warn. Just as in 1861, in my seat in Congress, 
I warned of similar southern schemes, but in vain. All waruiag fell on 
sodden hearts. In vain the lamented Douglas urged ; in vain the noble 
Crittenden pleaded. [Cheers for Crittenden !] New England fanaticism 
made compromise impossible. Let us now be warned in time ! As 
patriotic men, loving our whole country, we must understand the source 
of this new discontent. The West protest now, as New York and Penn- 
sylvania and New Jersey protested in the last elections, that tli.ey desire 
to stand in the Union, protected by all the muniments of the Constitution. 
Governor Seymour means much and well, when he says that these central 
and western States Avill at last assure us of our old Union. [Cheers.] 
They are willing to perform the voyage — desert the ship who may. They 
will keep all the shipping articles — break them who may. Tney do not 
intend to be ruled, however,' by the Constitution-breaking, law-defying, 
negro-loving Phariseeism of New England ! [A voice, " Let her slide" 
— cheers.] No. We will keep her in on her good behavior, and cast forth 
the seven devils of clerical meddling and monopolizing aggrandizement 



28i EIGHT TEAES DT CONGKESS. 

from this political Magdalen. [Laugliter.] From the social and political 
ban which will be issued against this pestilent section, will issue another 
and a better order of things, under the Constitution. 

I entreat the Democratic young men of New York not to countenance 
any of these schemes of dismemberment, which we of the West will I 
repress ; but never cease day nor night to warn the people of the new 
rocks and fresh breakers which threaten. He who is most faithful in « 
pointing them out in time, though he may be reviled, gives the best proof I 
of single-hearted loyalty, and will be approved by his conscience and his 
God. Denying all sympathy with any scheme which would in any way 
mutilate the Republic, I boldly declare to you these new and growing 
dangers. Jefferson Davis is aware of these things, and counts largely 
upon the weakness, incertitude, and division engendered by the fatal errors 
of this Administration. Already the Democi-atic organ of Cincinnati and 
the Republican oi-gan at Chicago are issuing their warnings in season. 
The latter advises its friends in Congress, that the farmer who is selling 
his corn for ten cents per bushel, if he does not use it for firewood, is not 
easily satisfied that there does not exist, somewhere, a way through which 
those Avho act for him at Washington may afibrd him relief. At least, 
he will, if the relief cannot be instant, want to know why it should not be 
prospective. He is perfectly aware that while New England is getting 
the benefits, the West is suffering the burdens of this war. In New 
England, the merchants and manufacturers have accumulated fortunes 
with Aladdin-like rapidity. There, wages are high and contracts abun- 
dant ; while the West, with the Mississippi sealed, is charged extortionate 
rates in the transportation of its produce, and in the price of its purchases. 
Its people are robbed by tariff, and robbed on what they sell and what 
they buy. IMr. Beecher has boasted that God has given the Yankee that 
intelligence that knows how to turn to gold all it touches. [Laughter.] 
It is his insatiate cupidity, mingled with his Puritanism, which is now 
making men study the new Census ; which makes the New Yorker won- 
der why, with a less population. New England has twelve Senators to 
hor two ! Ohio, too, ponders the fact that her population is greater, by 
435,294, than five New England States, yet they have ten Senators while 
she lias two ! Tlie West is beginning to ask whether this political equality 
among the States, made for a wise reason, is to be used for her oppression ; 
whether to that source is attributable the partial legislation which fosters 
manufacture and burdens the consumer ; which hampers the free inter- 
change and enterprise of this great emporium ; which shuts off the compe- 
tition of the world, and gives to New England fabrics the monopoly among 
ten millions of western farmers. Why are we to pay fifty per cent, more for 
goods, and lose fifty per cent, on wheat, and corn, and pork ? Fifty per cent. ! 
I should say ninety per cent., adding the cost of gold, in which the tariff 
is paid, to the custom duties, which the consumer at last pays. To gratify 
one favored class and section, the laws of economy are suspended with the 
Constitution I [Laughter and cheers.] Is free trade good, when it takes 
off the tluty and stops the revenue on maddrt' and coloring matter, but bad 
if it lets in free cotton and woollen fabrics? Is it right to tax Illinois whis- 
key until the manufacture is stopped, to gratify the members from Maine, 
and let the taritl" remain ou wood-screws, to enrich a Rhode Island cum- 



CIVIL WAK. 285 

pauy? One is made in the West and the other in New England ; but is 
that a reason why the one should be burdened by an internal tax to destroy, 
while the other bears an external tax to foster? Do you wonder that, at 
public meetings West, it is resolved that the Mississippi Valley shall no 
longer be tributary to cupidity and folly, and that men madly cry out : 
" New England fanaticism and speculation have made Disunion ! New 
England stands in the way of Re-Uniou ! Perish New England, that the 
Union may live I " There is a legend related of St. Lawrence. As he lay 
on the gridiron, conscious that he was sufficiently done on one side, he 
requested the cooks, if not too inconvenient, to turn him over and do him 
ou the other. [Laughter.] I fear the West will never be canonized, if it 
requires such double sacrifices to reach the saintly calendar. [Laughter.] 
But these economic abuses can be righted by another Congress. The 
evils are temporary. They would be borne, but unhappily they seem 
to be accompanied by an element harder to master — the Puritanism of 
New England. [Hisses.] This is bred in the bone. It is the same 
now that it was hundreds of years ago. Like begets like. Generation 
succeeds generation, with the same stamp of Pm'itan character ; taking 
success for justice, egotism for greatness, cunning for wisdom, cupidity 
for enterprise, sedition for liberty, and cant for piety. [Applause.] The 
West do not complain merely that their interests are sacrificed by New 
England capitalists, for their aggrandizement ; but they detest the idea 
of Puritan politics, that sins should be reformed by the State, and that 
the State should unite its functions practically with the church, for the 
propagation of moral and religious dogmas. For these objects the laws 
of economy and the dictates of public opinion, which ever look to the 
interest of sections and men, are disregarded. He who fails to observe 
these laws undei'stands little of the science of government. New England 
may be accounted smart in intellect, cunning in invention, and energetic 
in industry. She may boast of her libraries, schools, churches, and press. 
She may understand the science which subsidizes the lever, the pulley, 
the cylinder, and the wheel. She may study, as the worm does, how to draw 
a thread fine, and like the spider, how to make the web. She may un- 
derstand the mechanism of matter, and may boast an Archimedes and a 
Jacquard in every factory. But such smartness may be unable to com- 
^ prehend the machinery of a State. It may bring — nay,Ht has already 
brought — crash and confusion where better minds evolved beauty and 
harmony ! [Applause.] It is not true that New England is smart in 
the sense of wisdom. It is not smart to be informed on one side of a 
question. One-sided information is the blankest ignorance. A man who 
reads the " Tribune " exclusively, has a crazy activity of mind. [Laughter.] 
It is no evidence of smartness that New England should ai-ray against 
her the ideas of the rest of the Union, She showed no smai'tness in 
allowing this war to begin, when she could have prevented it. She has 
shown none in her estimate of the formidable character of the rebellion. 
She has shown none in her Morrill tariffs and her schemes of emancipa- 
tion. Is it smart to build factories and destroy the very sources of the 
cotton which runs them ? Is it smart to overtax, for her own benefit, a 
more powerful section, as she has the West? 

But it is neither wise nor just to impeach a whole people for the mis- 



286 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

doings and errors of a part, even when that part is dominant. While, 
therefore, I analyze the elements of New England society, and their 
relations to our politics, I shall not confound that which is good with that 
which is mischievous. In colonial times, the resentful bigotry of an 
Endicott was relieved by the amiabk chai-acter of a Winthrop ; as in later 
times Daniel Webster [cheers] stands like a granite rock repelling the 
wave of New England isms. [Cheers.] I would not confound Rufus „. 
Choate, Chief Justice Shaw, Benjamin F. Thomas, Judge Curtis, and ■ 
such illustrious men [cheers], with Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, 
Gov. Andrew, Charles Sumner, and tlie lesser spawn of Transcendental- 
ism. [Hisses.] The one class have ever cultivated the graces of civil 
order ; the other have been and ai*e the Marplots of the Republic. 

I speak of that ruling element, which even before it reached our shores, 
while it was in exile in Holland, while it ruled in early days at Plymouth 
and at Boston, and which has since been distributed all over our country, 
presents always the same selfish, pharisaical, egotistic, and intolerant type 
of character. We find it in our politics to-day, as the Tudors found it three 
hundred years ago, ever meddling for harm ; and yet seeking its own safety 
by concessions, but never conceding any thing for the welfare of others, 
unless, thereby, it could help itself in larger measure. [Laughter and 
cheers.] Even in the time of Elizabeth, it compromised with its perse- 
cutors, by agi'eeing to the passage of a bill by Parliament which shielded 
the Presbyterians, but provided a punishment for the Separatists. Hop- 
kins closes his history of the Puritans of that time, by saying, with dis- 
criminating justice, that " we do not claim for them that they had well- 
defined and correct ideas of civil liberty. For examjDle, the dispensing 
power of the sovereign — utterly in mockery of all legislation and prac- 
tically a canker at the root of civil liberty — seems to have been generally 
admitted by them." Just as now, when it suits their interest and object, 
they clamor for the proclamations and confiscations, which dispense with 
the Constitution. 

If we are to take their own account of themselves, as, for instance, 
when garnished with the rhetoric of Bancroft, one might infer that they^ 
deserve the eulogy of Macaulay, and that every petty presbyter was the A 
vicegerent of the Most High, specially anointed to reproach mankind witb— ' 
its shortcomings. [Laughter.] The truth is, that their history, as writ- 
ten by themselves, has been glossed with falsehood. Investigation is fast 
rubbing off the lacquer, and the rotten framework of their ethics and 
politics is beginning to appear. If they are permitted to write the annals 
of this present war, the truth will never appear. [Laughter.] But so 
momentous a conflict as this has awakened better minds ; and in the his- 
tory which posterity will read, the Puritans will play the part of intermed- 
dling destructives, self-willed and intolerant, beyond any characters yet 
known to history. 

The grand key-note of the Puritan is, that " slavery " was the cause 
of this war, and that as men and Christians we should extirpate it. 1 
do not intend now to refute this fallacy. Our past seventy years re- 
fute it. Because slavery was meddled with, and returned in vio- 
lence what was given in wrath and malice, it does not follow that 
it was the cause of the violence. The doctrine of the French Socialist 



J 



CIVIL WAE. 287 

Proudlion, that property is robbery and should be abolished, is a sam- 
ple of the same fallacy. What is known as Abolition is, in the moral 
sense, the cause of the strife. [Cheers.] Abolition is the offspring of 
Puritanism. Until Abolition arose, the Union was never seriously men- 
aced ; the Constitution was never endangered. Puritanism introduced 
the moral elements involved in slavery into politics, and thereby threw the 
church into the arena. Our Christianity, therefore, became a wrangler 
about human institutions. Churches were divided and pulpits desecrated. 
A certain class in a certain section were sinners, and were damned forever. 
Speculative discussion about a higher law than the organic political law, 
poisoned politics and begat asperities of sections. The first harangue of 
George Thompson, in this country, under the auspices of the Fessendens 
of Maine and Garrisons of Massachusetts, was predicated on the idea that 
slavery was a sin against God, and that no Christian people should tol- 
erate it. I hold in my hand the letters and addresses by George Thomp- 
son, during his mission here. In his first address, at Lowell, October 5, 
1834, he laid down the dogmas which are now being worked out in dis- 
union and blood. He said : " The medium through which he contem- 
plated the various tribes that peopled earth was one which blended all 
hues. Toward sin in every form, no mercy should be shown. A war of 
extermination should be waged with the works of the devil. . . Misguided 
patriotism spread the alai-m, ' the Union is in danger.' But whom should 
they obey? He boldly answered God, who required that men should cease 
to do evil." He demanded that the Constitution should be changed. 
" "What though the Union was in danger ! " said this interloper ; " there 
is every disposition among British Abolitionists to extend to you their 
sympathy, their counsel, and their contributions." We are now getting in 
overmeasure the sympathy, counsel, and contributions of these lovely kins- 
folk — the English Abolitionists. [Cheers and laughter.] 

Following this, as the logical consequence of these higher-law notions, 
came another volume, which I hold in my hand : " The Constitution a 
Pro-Slavery Compact, or Extracts from the Madison Papers, etc., selected 
by," whom think you ? Wendell Phillips ! [Hisses.] In this volume 
it was shown, as I quote : " That a compromise was made between free- 
dom and slavery in 1787, granting to the slaveholder distinct privileges 
and. protection for his slave property, in return for certain commercial con- 
cessions on his part toward the North." It proved also " that the nation at 
large were fuUy aware of this bargain at the time, and entered into it 
willingly and with open eyes." In the same volume are collected from 
the speeches of Webster and Quincy Adams certain passages, showing 
that slavery had its protection in the Constitution, and therefore the Con- 
stitution was a league with death and a covenant with hell. It'^vinds up 
with the demand : " No Union with slaveholders." Perhaps Wendell Phil- 
lips may not be considered by some as a representative of the Republican 
party. But he does truly represent this Administration, with its procla- 
mation of Abolition. Look at the votes in Congress on my motion on 
yesterday, to lay on the table a resolution by Thaddeus Stevens, to raise 
150,000 martial negroes. [Hisses.] Why, one would judge that the 
white race in this country were about to give up the conflict for their 
Government. I cannot see any special difference between the republican- 



288 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGEESS. 

ism that sustains emancipation proclamations and tlie real old genuine 
Congo Abolitionism. [Cheers]. They are two separate links of the same 
Bologna made out of the same canine original. [Great and continued 
applause and laughter,] 

I refer to these volumes to show that over thirty years ago the popu- 
lar instinct feared that the Union would be in danger from these insidious 
borings of these Puritanic reptiles. The riots then consequent upon such 
enunciations, Avere the instinctive outgushings of the Uuion-loving masses, 
fearing a speech too free and a cause too reckless for the stabiHty of the 
Government. These extracts are the germ of the power now overshadow- 
ing the land. We may learn from them that the religious element was 
invoked as the ally of this crusade against slavery. What though slavery 
was a part of the practical structure of society South, no matter. What 
though it was a part of the Providential order, just as it was in the time 
of Moses and the Saviour, no matter. Moses sought not to abolish it ; 
Christ and his apostles meddled not with it, but taught those general rules 
by which it might be regulated, if not abolished, outside of civil govern- 
ment. But a new evangel was preached. Applying the old doctrines of 
Puritanism to our established order, it began, on moral grounds, to un- 
dermine the structure of our civil society. It might at first sight seem 
anomalous that New Englanders, who have prided themselves on their 
local self-government, beginning with the town meeting, should play the 
meddler with the concerns of other people far distant, even though, to do 
it, they took the name and doctrine of religion. But such is the contra- 
diction of this Puritan character, that whenever it enjoyed a blessing it 
did not want it extended. In illustration, allow me to recur to the colo- 
nial days. 

It is susceptible of proof, that the reason why the PUgrim Fathers 
could not live in peace in England, was their tendency to propagate their 
creed offensively. They came hither, as is popularly believed, to escape 
persecution. When they came, what did they do? The Emperor of 
France, in his Idees Napoleoniennes (page 40), answers the question when 
he says that it is " almost always seen that in times of trouble, the oppressed 
cry out for liberty themselves, and having obtained it, they refuse lo grant 
it to others. There existed in England, in the seventeenth century, a re- 
ligious and republican sect, Avhich being persecuted, resolved to go be- 
yond the seas to an uninhabited world, there to enjoy that sweet and holy 
liberty which the Old World refused to grant. Victims of intolerance, 
certainly these independent men will, in the new country, be more just 
than their oppressors ! But, inconsistency of the human heart ! the very 
first law passed by the Puritans founding a new society in the State of 
Massachusetts, was one declaring the penalty of death to those who should 
dissent from these religious doctrines." This is the testimony of all his- 
tory, as I shall presently show. 

Before they leit England, King James said of them, we doubt not with 
some truth, that they were pests in the church and commonwealth. When 
the Mayflower and the Speedwell were on the sea with their freight of 
Pilgrims, the same perversity among themselves occurred. Their own 
historian, Elliott (p. 57), says that tliese vessels contained the Pilgrim 
wheat sifted frorn the three kingdoms ; but he says that it needed 



crvTL WAJE. 289 

sifting once or twice more. [Laughtcr.1 One of their leaders said : 
" Our voyage hither (from Holland to Dartmouth) hath been as full of 
crosses as ourselves of crookechiess." [Laughter.] Later, in 1621, he 
again said, " that they were yoked with some ill-conditioned people, who 
will never do good, but corrupt and abuse others." Oliver, in his history, 
proves that the captain of the Mayflower was bribed by the Dutch, who 
had settlements in this vicinity, not to land the Pilgrims in or near the 
Hudson, Avhere they intended to settle. [Laughter, and a voice, " That's 
true."] If there are any praying Knickerbockers here — [cries of " Plenty," 
and laughter] — I hope that I may not be considered intrusive upon spiritual 
concerns, if I suggest that it is not too late, even yet, to give thanks for 
that pious fraud which led to this happy riddance ! [Great laughter.] 

There is no doubt that, when exiled, as soon as they learned the lan- 
guage in Holland, they began to wrangle with the Dutch about their 
creed. This will accoimt for the anxiety about their presence in the 
island of Manhattan. It is a mistake to suppose that the Pilgrims left 
Holland on account of religious persecution. The reason which they 
gave for leaving Leyden was that the Dutch would not observe the Sab- 
bath, and the fear lest their childi'en should grow up dissipated Dutch- 
men. [Laughter.] But there were other reasons. They anticipated 
poverty, and were greatly influenced, as is sometimes the case yet with their 
descendants, by worldly considerations. [Laughter.] In the language of 
the time, their hopes of wealth mingled largely and freely with their hopes 
of heaven. [Laughter.] Adventure toward New England, by the northern 
company, was not altogether inspired by the yield of gold and silver, 
though visions of " mines which lay hid in the earth" were not wanting. 
But their treasures lay in the sea, and their divining rod held its hook and 
line. [Laughter.] They came here to serve God and catch fish^^ 
[Laughter.] When the Pilgrims went to James for their charter, he 
asked : " What profits do you intend ? " On being told " Fishing," he re- 
plied, ironically, " So God have my soul, 'tis an honest trade, 'twas the 
apostles' own calling." [Laughter.] It is a pity to spoil the poetry of Mrs. 
Hemans about the Pilgi'ims, by painting them as fishermen, who expected 
to find silver in the mouth of the fish theiy took ; but so it is. We can 
say of them, with truth, that they " sacrificed to their net, and burned in- 
cense to their drag, because by them their portion is fat and their meat 
plenteous." Their descendants have not forgotten unto this day to urge 
that the government of the Union should give them their fishing bounty. 
It is one among the privileges enjoyed by New England for her godly 
and apostolic mode of life. [Laughter.] When they catch a cod, out 
comes a tax from a western farmer ! But Avhen we catch a catfish or a 
sucker, in the West, we do not get any bounty. [Laughter.] 

The Puritan historian, Elliott, remarks upon the second ship load of Pil- 
grims, called Weston's men, that they were utterly demoralized ; so much 
so, that one of their number, /ro?n a lack of principle ^ while gathering 
clams, stuck in the mud and died there ! [Laughter.] The early 
annalists do not forget to record the fact, that as early as 1G26, Captain 
Wollaston's company arrived ; and that one Morton seduced them into 
quaffing and drinking, dancing and frisking ; and that therefore they were 
no better than atheists. One of the moral triumphs of the Puritans con- 
19 



290 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

sists in their having cut down the May pole of these revellers and captured 
their junketing captain. 

This tendency to make government a moral reform association appears 
all tlirough their history. It is the especial curse of this nation at the 
present time. This anti-slavery propagandism springs from it. Read the 
barbarous and silly codes of laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut, pun- 
ishing Quakers Avith death and fining persons twelve pence for smoking 
tobacco within two miles of a meeting house [laughter] ; or the penal 
laws against Dissenters voting and against walking in the gardens on 
Sabbath ; or the horrid cruelties against witchcraft and the puerile enact- 
ments against making mince pies on a Sunday — [laughter] — which ob- 
tained in these colonies, where the foundations of Democratic liberty are 
said to have been established. Is not the same spirit yet rife which 
mingles morals and politics to the detriment of both ? The Maine liquor 
law and the revenue tax law on liquors spring from the same source. 
Regardless of the rights of property in the one case, or the spirit of a 
revenue act in the other, New England bigotry ever strives to cure men's 
morals by legal penalties. From this same fountain the bitter waters of 
civil strife have flowed. In this moral sense, the Constitution is now 
sought to be construed, administered, or nullified. The counsel of the 
War Department, Mr. "Whiting, a Boston attorney, in an elaborate dis- 
cussion of the war powers and legislative powers, follows the Puritan 
doctrine, by upholding the " right of the Government to interfere with 
slavery, Mormonism, or any other institution, condition^ or social status, 
into which the subjects of the United States can enter, whenever such 
interference becomes essential as a means of common defence or public 
..welfare.''^ It is always understood, of course, that what is for the com- 

rmon^de'feuce and public w^elfare, is to be decided by the Brahmins of Bos- 
ton ! It being also further understood that we Soodras of the West — ^being 
of another and inferior caste — are obliged to confess the infallibility of the 
Brahminical decision. It is under just such doctrines that proclamations 
of anti-slavery issue. Other sections are not to be consulted. Had the 
central, Avestern, and border States been consulted, the proclamation never 
would have been issued^ Giving to the rebellion more vigor and unity, 
and to the North discouragement and division, it will only be potent for 
mischief by procrastinating the war. This is the direful result of these 
intermeddling purists of New England. But the proclamation was to 
end the war. How? By the paper and ink used in its printing? By 
the language written, or the sound thereof? No ! But as a military 
measure ! How ? By stirring up the blacks to mutiny, and thus stopping 
the supply of rebel labor ! Well — two weeks are gone. We see no sign 
yet. Over three months are gone since the threat of its issue ; but where 
are the results? It has made every southern man and woman a police 
force to guard against an uprising of the blacks ; but the great rebellion 
lives. The war goes on. Governor Andrew and the negroes may con- 
tinue to dance their jubilees with their head, and, as usual, to contemplate 
its results with their heels. What idle and criminal nonsense to expect a 
rebellion like this to be put down by words — legislative or proclamative 
— words drawn from the passionate and wild utterances of New England 
Puritanism, in press and pulpit. Rather than yield this censorship over 



CIVIL WAE. 291 

the morals of these States, New England was ready to welcome this 
bloody strife of brothers. Nor is this the first time she has convulsed the 
Republic, to propagate her dogmas. In 1798, the same overbearing self- 
ishness was exhibited. In a letter of June 1st, 179S, from Mr. Johnson 
to John Taylor of Roanoke, it is said : 

" It is true, that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut ; and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting 
our strength and subsistence. Their natural friends, the three other Eastern States, join 
them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of 
the Union, so as to make use of them to govern the whole. This is not new ; it is the 
old practice of despots, to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those 
who have once got an ascendency and possess themselves of all the resources of the na- 
tion, their revenues and ofiSces, have immense means for retaining their advantage." 

Could there be a truer description of our present condition, under the 
lash and spur of this fanaticism? Speaking of this condition and its 
causes, an eminent New England divine and scholar. Dr. Lord, well re- 
marks, that we were safe in the Union till the moral balance was de- 
ranged, and the Church and State fell out of their true relations to each 
other and to moral government. He says further : 

" We were tempted almost unconsciously into that snare by introducing a moral ele- 
ment — slavery — into the reckoning of politics, and thereby brought Church and State 
together down to that lower level. From that time our glory has departed. Our Chris- 
tianity has become secular, and our secular glory has been dimmed in having lost the 
reflection of a more spiritual light. We have substituted speculation for faith, and our 
speculative discussions have been degraded into angry wranglings. We have made God 
and man to exchange places. His institutes and His constitutions we have interpreted by 
the ' higher law ' of our own conceits. We have converted the Sovereign Law Giver into 
a politician. We have discussed by our own standards, and determined by vote how it is 
best for Him to carry on His government of the world. We have inquired not what Ho 
has willed and done, but what it is expedient for Him to will, and say, and do, according 
to a master, a party, or a school. We have popularized our creeds, measured principles 
by their utilities, and God himself hy His supposed subservienci/ to our ideas." 

I propose to give two illustrations of these truths. The first is in 
your midst. Every Sabbath you have a sermon from Dr. Cheever [hisses], 
demonstrating that our failures in battle are owing to the displeasure 
of God, because of the sin of slavery. [Cries of " Oh ! "] He makes 
slavery the terrible crime of the world in his own fancy, and reduces Om- 
nipotence to the task of punishing us by war for its existence. He con- 
veniently forgets that there is another side to the battle, and that when 
v/e fail, God sides, by his foolish logic, with the slaveholders. [Laughter.] 
Parallel with this logic, turn back to 1676, when Randolph came to New 
England from the parent Government, to find out the cause of the Indian 
war. The answer of the Government of Massachusetts furnishes the 
cause. It officially declared that "these are the great and provoking evils 
for which God hath given the barbarous heathen commission to rise 
against them : For men wearing long hair and periwigs made of 
women's hair. [Laughter.] For women wearing borders of hair, and 
(or cutting, curling, and laying out their hair, and disguising them- 
selves by following strange fashions in their apparel. [Laughter.] For 
profaneness in the people in not frequenting the meetings, and others 
going away before the blessing is propounded. [Laughter.] For suffering 
the Quakers to dwell among them, and to set up their thresholds by God's 



292 EIGHT YEARS m CONGRESS. 

thresholds, contrary to their old laws and resolutions, with many such 
reasons." 

Thus it will be seen that the original defects in the Puritan pattern 
have heen copied to this day. Like the Chinese artist, when told to copy 
I a fine and costly piece of porcelain to which some accident had happened, 
he followed his instructions with such great skill and labor, that he copied 
the crack which extended the whole length of the model. [Laughter.] 
Another fact of history not generally accepted, is that the charter granted 
by King James to the Pilgrims, was for the express purpose of enlarging 
the gospel by the conversion of the Indians. The charter was intended 
to start a rival mission to that of the Jesuits among the red men. Of 
course, commerce, fishing, and the gospel were to go hand in hand. But 
the sequel showed that instead of evangelizing the Indians, they soon be- 
gan to regard them as red devils, whose extermination was a great duty, 
inasmuch as a military necessity demanded their rich lands. [Cheers and 
laughter.] The salvation of the red men was entirely forgotten in their 
disputations among themselves as to theii- own creeds. Their charter was 
violated. Turbulence and meddling between the various settlements began 
to prevail. The Church ruled with an iron sceptre. No one could be a 
voter, if he were not a church member. Although the agents of the Puri- 
tan Bay State, when they departed from England, prayed for the prosperity 
of their " dear mother," the Church of England, they were ready to per- 
secute in the wilderness as well those who adhered to that Church as those 
who dissented from themselves. Under the rule of this Puritan church, 
every form of surveillance was practised. The late spy system in New Eng- 
land churches, as illustrated in the case of the father and son, at Boston, last 
year, who were accused of disloyalty before a board of deacons, because 
they were Democrats, finds its antetype in the cruel persecutions of the Qua- 
kers and Baptists, and in the Salem witchcraft. There was then a general 
belief that Massachusetts had a devil. That belief prevails yet, outside 
of Massachusetts. [Laughter.] The miserable fanatics of 1691-'2, who 
hunted out little girls and poor old women and tried them for witchcraft 
in meeting houses before godly hypocrites, have their imitators in the 
zealots of to-day — those minions of power who spy about to accuse and 
arrest those who differ with them in politics. [Cheers.] Cotton Mather 
said then : " The Ty Dogs of the Pit are amongst us ; and the firebrands 
of Hell are used for scorching us, and that New England should be thus 
harassed ! not by swarthy Indians, but they are sooty devils." His say- 
ing would have more truth repeated now, for the present generation. 
The same egotistic intolerance is observable in their treatment of Roger 
"Williams in 1635. His persecutors came to New England with no cor- 
rect ideas of religious toleration. Theu* system tolerated no contradic- 
tion and allowed of no dissent. The statutes of uniformity of England 
they reenacted here, by church and public sentiment. This was the 
source of those dissensions which rent their own youthful Republic, 
and whose intolerant spirit has produced in our time that sectional 
alienation which deluges the land in blood. The New England Pilgrim 
drove Roger Williams into the winter wilderness, as he drove Mrs. Hutch- 
inson and Coddington to the same exile, for differences of opinion in 
religion. He enacted laws forbidding trade with these outlaws for con- 



CIVIL AVAR. 293 

science sake. Savages were more kind than these bigots ; for the Indians 
hospitably received the victims of persecution. Disdaining the Pope as 
Antichrist, and hating the prelate, these harsh Pilgrims set up every 
little vanity of a preacher as their pope infallible, every village Paul Pry 
as an inquisitor, and every sister communicant as a spy for the detection 
of heresy. 

It is an unpleasant task to recall the fierce disputes of these " gospel 
magistrates." The trial of Vane and Coddington, and the trial of Wain- 
wright and Mrs. Hutchinson, are fruitful in suggestions bearing on the 
present time. Eiglit3'-t\vo distinct heresies were passed upon at one time 
by the Synod at Boston. In these isms of that early day, you will find 
the type of all the isms of the present ; including free-loveism, which has 
its counterpart in the Familists. The history of Puritanism is a catalogue 
of murders, maimings, extortions, and outrages, contrary to English com- 
mon law, and against every notion of human justice and liberty. Search 
history from the death of Abel to the present, and you will find no such 
cruelties as those practised by the prejudiced, dyspeptic Puritans, not only 
upon the white citizen and the Indian, but upon the simple Acadian peas- 
antry, whose distant homes they invaded and destroyed. That iron-visaged 
man, in his high-peaked hat and ruff, whether he played the part of mag- 
istrate and elder, or that of Dugald Dalgetty, like Captain Miles Standish, 
impelled either by his " conscience or his catarrh," rises fi'om the dark 
background of colonial history, the most hateful image ever pictured by 
Time, the more detestable because many of his victims, as in the far-off 
Acadia, were the most patient, gentle, and tolerant of men ! No wonder 
a New England poet, Halleck, writes : 

" Uerod of Galilee's babe-butclicring deed 

Lives not on history's blusliing page alone. 
Our skies, it seems, have seen like victims bleed. 

And our own Ramahs echoed gi'oan for groan : 
The fiends of France, whose cruelties decreed 

Those dextrous drownings in the Loire and Rhone, 
Were, at their worst, but copyists, second-hand, 
Of our shrined, sainted sires — the Plymouth Pilgiim band." 

Had these Pharisees remained in England, they might have become 
martyrs to their faith, and died glorying in religious persecution. But 
truth demands that we should call them by their own names ; they were 
in America the cruel zealots of bitter persecution, the more odious because 
they professed so differently ; the more odious still because they were 
reproved in their own generation by better and nobler men, like Williams, 
who Av^ere their victims. Were there not so much of suffering and malice 
attendant upon such intolerance, we might dismiss it all into that * 

" Limbo broad and targe, and called 

The Paradise of fools." 

All that relieves New England from the blackness of these reproaches, 
is her splendid zeal and sacrifice for independence in the subsequent cen- 
tury. Though it is by no means clear but that she would have rol)elled 
against the best government on earth, or even a commonwealth of angels, 
not according to her own notions ; yet the mother country gave her cause, 
and she vindicated it with spirit. 



/ 



294: EIGHT YEAKS IK CONGEESS. 

The boast that the Pilgrims were the fathers of Democratic liberty in 
this country, is absolutely nnh-ue, unless their persecutions, which led to 
i it, may be considered the cause of such liberty. -/Allow me to adduce 
certain facts to prove what I allege: — Np.av Plymouth, which remained 
separate from Massachusetts Bay until 1688, is pointed to as the exem- 
plar in this great work of human progress. The truth is, that Plymouth 
received its privileges in a mercantile line from the London, Virginia, and 
afterwards from the Plymouth Company of adventurers. They left Eng- 
land because they had not the stamina to remain and contend, like the 
Hampdens, Sidneys, and Miltons, for their English privileges. Bradford, 
Brewster, and Carver may have been godly men ; but there were men in 
the Mayflower who v/ished a larger liberty than their leaders were willing 
to accord. The famous " Compact," signed in the cabin of the ship, 
11th November, 1G20, was forced from the superiors by their inferiors. 
So says the historian. (Elliott, 104.) I quote : " The men of birth and 
education among the Pilgrims, and they were few, did not intend a De- 
mocracy. They had no faith in it." - The social distinction between 
" Mr." and " Goodman " still continued. Not until Williams and Cod- 
dington, respectively at Providence and Newport, E. I., established the 
first Democracy in America, with the majority of the freemen to make 
laws, and upon the basis that no man should be made criminal for " doc- 
trines," was there any true political or soul liberty in New England. In 
Massachusetts, according to Judge Story, five-sixths of the people were 
disfranchised because they were not members of the church. The code 
of anti-democratic sumptuary laws is the most abominable ever enacted, 
not merely for its harshness of penalty, but for its caste discrimination. 
It seems copied from the Gentoo code. Indeed, we know, as Dr. Holmes 
has said, that there are yet in New England the Brahmin and Soodra castes. 
There is an old law that men might be whipped forty lashes, but gentle- 
men never, except in very flagrant cases. The excesses of apparel were 
provided against rigorously. Men of mean condition were not allowed to 
dress in gold and silver lace, or buttons, or points at their knees, or to 
walk in great boots [laughter], or women of the same rank to wear silks, 
hoods, or scarfs. In Harvard College penalties were meted out upon 
the same Gentoo code of caste. This was Democracy in Massachusetts. 
In this Commonwealth the directors of a company usurped the power of 
rulers and magistrates. The elders of the church upheld them. John 
Cotton wrote Avith pious horror that " Democracy was not ordained as fit 
for the government either of church or commonwealth ; as for monarchy 
and aristocracy, they are both of them clearly approved and directed by the 
Script-ures." The freemen rose against both Church and rulers, and after 
a long contest, the freemen succeeded ; but thoy, too, broke the charter. 
No one was allowed to be a freeman but a church member, and the State 
relapsed into a bigoted church oligarchy. Then began a new contest 
for supremacy. The church, of course, took the side of the oligarchy, 
the Puritan leaders still struggling against the growth of civil liberty. 
The republican cast into which the government was finally moulded, was 
forced upon it by the freemen, in spite of the elders and magistrates. 
The very genius of their religion disfranchised tlie people, and, strange as 
it may seem, the people disfranchised by the Church owed then their 



CIVIL WAR. 295 

final emancipation into Democratic liberty to the compulsory interposition 
of Charles II. In the seventeenth century Puritanism muzzled the press 
and sealed the lips of its victims and enemies, just as in the nineteenth 
the same inveterate foe of Democracy has done the same thing. The 
wrong-headed fanaticism which refuses to consider the Democratic Gos- 
pel of Love, clung to Ihe Old Testament with its lex tallonis for its codes. 
Familists and Baptists, Quakers and deluded people who gathered sticks 
for fire on a Sunday, were all punislied by the harsh Jewish code. All 
other crimes not punished by the law already enacted, were to be attended 
to according to the old Bible, as the fanatic interpreted it, the " higher 
law " of their own private judgment being the canon of interpretation. 
This is the boasted Pilgrim Democracy ! 

Do we wonder that crimes of the most disgusting and heinous charac- 
ter abounded here? In 1689, the elders in Synod bewailed the great and 
visible decay of godliness. Apostasies and degeneracies, profaneness, 
debauchery, cursing, swearing, lying, gaming. Sabbath-breaking, idleness, 
di'unkenness, and uncleanness constitute the frightful picture of Puritanism 
before a half century of rule in Massachusetts. By striving to make the 
Church political they did not make the State religious. The smallest 
privilege of citizenship was only obtained through grace and saintship, 
and hence general hypocrisy and demoralization. 

It is not within the scope of this address to show how these men of 
God treated the Indians. Their doctrine, that lands unoccupied by agri- 
culture it was theirs to take. " vacuum domicilium, cedit occiipanti,'^ was 
deduced from the Jewish code, just as they held and traded in slaves by 
the same code. What a civilization is this to be commended to the ac- 
ceptance to-day of twenty millions of people ! The rules for our guid- 
ance in national trouble can never come from such a source. 

What has New England done for the country? Much every way, as 
Governor Andrew boasts ; but chiefly this, as I think. She has sent to 
us, as to NeAv York, many liberal-minded, noble men. She has given us 
Douglas [cheers], Seymour [cheers], McClellan. [Great cheering.] 
Liberal, great, but liberal and great because they have repudiated Pu- 
ritan teaching. [Applause.] Moreover, she gave Samuel Adams for 
Revolutionary counsel, and in later days, Rufus Choate to admonish us of 
the dangers of sectionalism. In the old war she gave Greene and Stark, 
neither of them representing the Puritan element. Greene Avas a Quaker 
of Rhode Island, and moved South. Stark was a Democrat, and one of 
his descendants, who, last year, was the Democratic candidate for Gov- 
ernor of New Hampshire, is now battling against Puritanism in that State. 
In the late war she gave us General Hull, as in the Revolution General 
Arnold, and as now she gives us General Butler. [Groans and hisses 
for Butler.] x 

New England voted against Jefferson at first, and her pulpit reviled 
him as it did Douglas. She voted against Jackson at first, and her press 
slandei'ed him, as it now slanders McClellan. Her Josiah Quincys de- 
nounced the acquisition of Louisiana, as in later days her Sumners have 
denounced the South. Her Mathers, of the colonial days, thundered 
against the Quakers and Baptists because they differed in doctrine, just as 
lately Butler closed the churches of New Orleans because the ministry 



296 EIGHT YEAJSS IN CONGRESS. 



L-Ts 



I would not pray as Butler — the Saint — dictated. / She denounced,' in early 
times, the Indians as devils, whose lands were forfeit, as now she denoun- 
ces slavery, while her humanitarians covet the vacant soil and her specu- 
lators slip through our lines to dicker for slave-produced secession cotton. 
[" That's true."] She has been the foe to the Democracy from the 
days of the Eevolution to the present hour. -'Her Marseillaise is a hymn 
I" of apotheosis to John Bi'own — a horse-thief and a murderer, r But amidst 
( all these conflicts she has had in her midst a minority of liberal, stead- 
fast, and patriotic Democrats. I desire to be understood as casting no 
reflection upon this heroic minority, soon, I trust, to become a triumphant 
majority. 

To sum up the general aspect of this Puritanism : It does not appear 
to have exemplified but rarely the duty of obedience to the civil magis- 
trate. It never consecrated a savage to God, in accordance with its early 
charter. Its usurped powers were never used to quell sedition and to 
strengthen peace. It has always had a squint-eyed intellect which re- 
minds me of — [A voice, " Butler ! " cheering] — looking with two optics 
to one selfish point ; and a eunuch morality ever exclusive and revengeful. 
Its solemn pretenses to peculiar godliness were the general rule, while 
Liberty of Conscience and Democracy in polity were the exception. In- 
stead of making the Church the tomb of dissensions, it made the Church the 
theatre of strife, and carried into the State the same pretensions and bigotry 
which it illustrated in the Church. Its literature was of that vain-glorious 
character, wliich yet distinguishes the descendants of the Puritans. What it 
has gained in grace of style it has lost in sincerity. Mark its progress from 
the Mathers of one hundred and fifty years ago to the Cheevers, Beech- 
ers, and Parkers of to-day. Swollen with spiritual pride, it complacently 
asumed to read the designs of Providence as if it were a part of the God- 
head ! Its harshness made the Conformist into a Separatist, the Separatist 
into an Anabaptist, the Anabaptist into a Quaker, and the Quaker into an 
Infidel. From step to step in our day, it has rvin the round fi-om ortho- 
doxy, beginning with Mucklewrath Cheever, brim full of vengeance 
against sins " he has no mind to," and winds up in that perfect infi- 
delity and scepticism which Parker preached and Emerson sung. Exalt- 
ing this life above the next, it is not content with' the order of Providence. 
It must assume control of the Cliariot of the Sun, and direct all its shine 
and shadow. Alas ! how fatal has been its direction in national affairs, 
this red chaos in our system now tells ! The Puritanism of the "Wilder- 
ness of 1630 and 1G90 was restricted in its results and evils. Now we 
see its workings on a grander scale, involving a Continent in its conten- 
tions. It is a power. So is Satan. It is intellectual. So are his minis- 
ters. It has pride, stubborn and egotistical. So all scourges of the eai'th, 
have had from the Proconsul of Sicily to the Proconsul at New Orleans. 
Can .any one ask: " How is it possible for such a civilization to be the 
cause of so great a civil war?" Because it is the parent of Abolition, and 
because Abolition, such as Thompson and Phillips taught, found tJie right 
soil lor their bad seed ; therefore it flourished to the overthrow of civil 
liberty, by the intermeddling with State institutions and social and labor 
systems, entirely alien to New England, xmdcr the Federal Constitution. 
Holding to the higher law, and at last obtaining office under its banner, 



CIVIL WAE, 297 

it spread distrust and apprehension of its excesses among one-half of the 
States, and rebellion, rash and unjustifiable, was the result. Men of no 
mark — mere pigmies compared to Webster and Clioatc — the Andrews and 
Sumners of the day, inflated with an airy sentimentalism, began their prop- 
agandism, to make saints by statute, and Paradises out of politics. They 
rallied all the isms to the one baneful and hated focus of Abolitionism, 
and drove the half of the nation to revolt by its contumely and aggressions. 
Visionaries, mistaking their fancies for the Gospel of Kindness and Peace, 
intent upon the restitution of the blacks to a liberty they only give them 
in fancy, destitute of all practical concern for Church and State, they have 
striven, like the classic sorceress, to give a new youth and beauty to the 
State by dismembering it. [Applause.] They substitute their Platou- 
ism for the Gospel of Christ, and thereby lose that docility and humility 
which are the very essence of Christianity. 

At the New England dinner, not long since, Mr. Bcecher took pride 
in these very characteristics. He gloried in the Yankee because " he 
was the most prying and meddlesome creature in God's world, the born 
radical of modern civilization, the pickpocket of creation [laughter], that 
to leave New England out of the Union was to leave the head out of the 
body." [Hisses.] This is the old egotism. It is the same supercilious- 
ness v/hich has produced so much scorn South, and is now alienating the 
West. T' This claim of all the intelligence and conscience of the land, i 
which comes from Boston and is echoed from Brooklyn, is the offshoot of/\ 
the same pharisaical cant, which has sung its own praises through its : 
nasal organ for three hundred years, "f [Great cheering and laughter.] It 
has assumed peculiar offensiveness now and here amidst the bloody strife, 
of which it is a prominent contributor. 

I propose to examine the source of this egotistic and arrogant philoso- 
phy. It is not from the Gospel. It is not even a bad exaggeration of 
the old Puritanism, for that had many harsh and rigid virtues. It comes 
from that coterie known around Boston as Transcendentalists. Its first 
organ was the " Dial." Its most clever exponent was Emerson. It has 
its priests, high and low, including the great Channing, who ministered 
in holy things with many enlarged graces of heart, to the little Channing, 
who foists himself into the Senate room at Washington of Sundays, to 
preach Abolition hate and retail such slander against the Democracy as the 
powers at Washington seem most to relish. 

But what is this transcendentalism? Whence is it? It is stolen from 
Ilindostan by Mr. Beecher's pickpocket of creation. [Laughter.] It is 
the emanation of Oriental speculation. This I will prove. The smart 
Yankee has only plagiarized what the Vedas contain, what the Brahmins 
believe. All the poetic prose and prosaic poetry of Emerson ; all the 
vague generalities of Alcott ; all the infidelity of Parker ; all the senti- 
mentalism of Phillips, come from the Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon, 
called Bhagavat-Gecta, originally written in the Sanscrit, translations 
of which, under the auspices of Warren Hastings, are to be foimd in 
some of the libraries. This philosophy cannot be called Pantheism, for 
that absorbs nature and man in God ; it is not Materialism, for that ab- 
sorbs man and God in nature ; but it is the absorption of God and nature 
in man, and that man the Brahmin or the Puritan ! It believes in nothing 






298 EIGHT YEAJRS IN CONGEESS. 

but llie soul. The soul of man is God and nature. No matter, no color, 
nothing but the soul in man ; he is all ; it is all. One of these disciples 
— Alcott — holds that the world would be what it should be, if he were 
only as holy as he should be. This is the nearest approach of this sect 
to humility. He being all in all, he holds himself personally responsi- 
ble for the obliquity of the earth's axis. [Laughter.] Do you wonder, 
therefore, that he holds himself responsible for slavery in Carolina? 
Another, Emerson, holds that he (Emerson) is God ; that God is every 
thing ; therefore he (Emerson) is every thing. [Merriment.] Do you 
wonder, therefore, that since he makes the ne^o a part of himself, 
he holds him to be his equal ? [Increased laughter.] Or that he believes 
that every thing is — as he is ? Do you wonder at the imperturbable im- 
pudence and self-sufiiciency of the Puritan thus indoctrinated? The Hin- 
doos said : " Rich is that Universal Self, whom thou worshippest as the 
Soul." The same sentiment is found in the verse of Emerson : " Noth- 
ing is if thou art not ; thou art under, over all ; thou dost hold and cover 
all. Thou art Atlas ; thou art Jove ! " Do you wonder that, under this 
philosophy, the Southern men and mind were underrated? That the 
greatness and strength of Massachusetts and the North were overrated? 
It was under these moonshiny delusions that Governor Andrew foresaw 
the roads swarm Avitli the myriads, who never trooped to the war [laugh- 
ter], and that Greeley beheld the nine hundred thousand rush to Father 
Abraham, who are yet to rush. [Laughter.] Turn again to the Hin- 
doo, and hear what the Puritan saith in the Sanscrit. I read from the 
Geeta ; but you will think it is the " universal Yankee," speaking of 
himself: " I am the sacrifice, the worship, the fire, the victim, the father 
and mother of this world, the gi-andsire [laughter], the preserver. I am 
the holy one, only worthy to be known. I am the hope of the good, the 
comforter, the creator, the witness, the asylum. I am generation and dis- 
solution. [Laughter.] I am sunshine. I am rain. I now draw in ; I 
now let out. I am death and immortality. I am entity and nonentity. 
[Laughter.] I am the beginning, the middle, and the end. [Merriment.] 
Among the faculties, I am the mind." Just what Mr. Bcecher holds. 
[Laughter.] " Among the animals, I am reason ; among the mountains, 
Himalaya ; amongst the floods, I am the ocean ; amongst elephants, I am 
the everlasting big elephant. [Great laughter.] Of all science, I am 
the knowledge of the ruling spirit ; and of all speaking, lam the oration." 
[A voice : " Sumner." Laughter.] " Amongst rulers, I am the rod." 
[A voice : " That is Butler." Laughter.] " Amongst those who seek 
for conquests, I am the policy." [" Abolition." Laughter.] " All the 
qualities incident to beings, such as reason, truth, humility, meekness, 
equality, courage, fame, shame, renown, and infamy, come from me ! " 
A Brahmin, that is, one who lives in or near Boston, can attain unto 
these. " All these qualities," says the Hindoo, " hang on me, as jewels and 
gems on a string, for there is not any thing greater than I." How is he 
to attain all these? The Hindoo again tells us : " He should sit, with his 
mind fixed on one object alone " — the negro, I suppose' -[laughter] — " in 
the exercise of his devotion for the purification of his soul, keeping his 
head, his neck, his body, steady -without motion, his eyes fixed on the 
point of his nose" — cross-eyed, you £';e [laughter] — " looking at no other 



CIVIL "WAE. 299 

place around." Thus, and not otherwise, he sees heaven at the tip of his own 
nose. [Laughter.] Were it not that these directions are written in Book 
VI. of the lectures of Kreeshna, one would imagine they were written by 
Cotton Mather about himself, or a Boston philosopher in and about the 
Hub of the Universe. [Laughter.] It was by following these directions 
of the Vedas that John Fisher Murray, an Irish wit, was enabled to prove 
that black was white, and by a process of unification which will com- 
mend itself to Boston Transcendentalism. " Black," says he, " is one 
thing and white another thing. You don't conthravayue that? But every 
thing is aithcr one thing or the other thing. I defy the Apostle Paul to 
get over that dilimma. Well, if any thing be one thing, well and good ; 
but if it be another thing, then it's plain it isn't both things [laughter], 
and so can't be two things ; nobody can deny that. But what can't be 
two things, must be one thing ; ergo, whether it's one thing or another 
thing, it's all one. [Great laughter.] But black is one thing and white 
is another thing ; ergo, black and white is all one." [Laughter.] Quod 
erat demonstrandum, that a negro is as good as a white man. [Laugh- 
ter.] The ordinary perception of mankind would be shocked at such a 
conclusion, but a Pm-itan Transcendentalist accepts it as a part of the 
soul unity, which he derives from looking with solemn introspection into 
his own nature. This is what imparts to Transcendentalism such a sub- 
lime egotism. All that is great in invention, in letters, in reason, in war, 
must emanate from its " over soul." It peeps into all things, and some 
others ; " c?e omnihus rebus et quibiisdam aliis." Mr. Beecher, in describ- 
ing the universal meddlesomeness of the Yankee, has but the voice of 
Brahma, which Emerson echoed, when he Avrote : 

" There is no great and no small 
To the soul that maketh all, 
And where it cometh, all things are, 
And it cometh — everywhere." [Laughter.] 

The " Evening Post" wonders how a Union hereafter is possible, with 
New England out ! " Can there be," it asks, " a head without brains, or 
a body without heart ? Wliere there is a school, there is New England ; 
a free press. New England ; a lecture room. New England ! Can these 
be left out, and a soul remain? " Some day, this dream of Puritan com- 
placency may break, and. the fact, hard and granite as her hills, remain, 
not that she is left out, but that, by the action of many of her own sons in 
the North-Wcst, whose transplanting has improved the stock and enlarged 
the culture, her peculiar ideas are limited in their effect and scope to her own 
borders. Her heathen philosophy cannot live. As Dr. Lord has recently 
said : "Its gaudy sophistry took its natural popular effect ; it assumed to 
be arrogant, insulting, and encroaching. It was envious of God's appoint- 
ments — the famUy, the State, the church ; and it scrupled not to assail 
their blood-cemented foundations." In the press, lecture, pulpit, and finally 
in Congress and the Executive Departments, it has pursued its way and 
enveloped this nation in garments of blood. It will only awake, I fear, 
from its gory dream, when it is left weeping over the victims of its own 
delusions. This philosophy has a deeper and worse aim than that of up- 
rooting the State. Already it has sown the seed of dissolution in the 
church, and scepticism in all creeds. ■ Parker, following the Hindoo and 



300 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

Emerson, found what he called the " out-ness of God to be the in-ness of 
man, and so God works with us." Or in other phrase, since God is man 
and nature man, " many a savage," says Parker, " his hands smeared 
over with human sacrifice, shall come from the East and West, and sit 
down in the kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates 
and Jesus." Thus we are taught in shocking blasphemy that the worst ; 
method of life will answer as well as the best. And again, he enjoined his 
disciples " to obey God, as the spirituality of spirit, which is immanent in i 
all things ; in the blush of the rose and in the bite of the dog ; in the 
breath of the breeze, and in the howl of the maniac. Believe that the 
Divine incarnation is in all mankind ; therefore, imitate it, and if we sin, 
ask no forgiveness." Nor need we wonder that, from the same source, 
the Intercessor for Mankind, the Saviour, is sneered at as " the Attorney 
by which we are to approach the Infinite." ; or, that when such systems 
have their devotees in religion. Abolition has its devotees in political 
ethics ; or that a spirit of hostile encroachment should mark the career 
of this cabal of egotistic zealots, and that State lines are obliterated and 
constitutional faith dissolved as figments in their crazed imaginations. 
Alas ! this war is teaching the people, too late, that the Federal Union is 
not to be carried on by the dogmas of Brahma, or the sophisms of Emer- 
son, or the infidelity of Parker. We are taught, too late, that a system 
of public morality prevalent in one section, is not the guide of duty under 
the Constitution ; that the inexorable laws of economy, of climate, soil, 
production, supply, and demand, are not to be overruled by the poetry of 
Whittier about the oppressed black, or the vagaries of Sumner about the 
barbarism of slavery. 

I have thus traced the history and philosophy of Puritanic egotism and 
self-sufficiency, which has fomented trouble in distant domestic affairs. I 
have already detained you so long that [cries of " Go on ! go on ! " from 
all parts of the house] I will conclude with some practical reflections on 
the consequences of such conduct. When the Constitution was made, there 
were two kinds of interpretation which followed it : that of New England, 
which tended to centralize power, and that of Virginia, which decentral- 
ized power. The one encroached on State rights ; the other restrained 
the encroachment. Under the contention. New England, with her per- 
sonal liberty bills and higher law, alarmed the South ; and the South, in 
return, pushed her interpretation into actual and violent secession. New 
England got her advantages in the Constitution for yielding its protection 
to slavery. They were commercial and profitable. She has yet her tariff 
and bounties. She has ever made the most out of the Federal Union. 
When she was called on to make sacrifices, as in the wars of this country, 
she was loth to make them. There are even now 16,000 deserters from 
the JMassachusctts regiments. She forgot her hatred of State rights in 
the late war with Great Britain. Her Hartford Convention was called to 
endorse the policy of Governor Strong, of Massachusetts, that no forcible 
draft, conscriptions or impressments should be made by the General Gov- 
ernment upon the States. That Governor refused to accede to the Presi- 
dent's requisition for troops, to be used by the President in a war against 
England, which he could not approve. This smacks somewhat of the late 
conduct of Governor Andrew, when he sought to impose conditions as to 



CIVIL WAE. 301 

troops in the present conflict. The famous Hartford Convention was a 
secession body. Its address urged tliat '• some new form of Confederacy 
should be substituted among those States Avhich sliall intend to maintain a 
Federal relation to each other ; " and concluded with the usual Puritanic 
appeal to "a higher authority than any earthly government can claim." 
Later, in the Mexican War, we know how prompt the Puritans were to 
seek a refuge from national duty in the doctrine of Peace and Disunion ; 
we know how Charles Sumner had found the " true grandeur of nations" 
to consist in arbitration and peace under every possible condition of things ; 
and how the press and the poets of New England laughed at the sergeant 
of the United States when he beat for recruits. By pasquinade and from 
pulpit, the war was discouraged and enlistments checked. But now, when 
the present war is to be carried on against the South ; when Puritanism 
is to be gratified by the death of slavery ; when the nation is rocked by 
the thi'oes of civil, and not foreign war, the same old vindictive intolerance 
is aroused which made the early Puritans so infamous. There is aroused 
the same desire to confiscate, which changed the red men into sooty devUs, 
that the saints might enter in and possess the lauds of the Pequods ; and 
the same arrogant assumption of intellect is quickened which will never 
cease tiU it assassinates the RepublicrT^ New England may thrive for'"\ 
awhile on the Avar contracts, which keep her people busied and money j 
plentiful. So long as this seeming prosperity is kept up, her cry for \ 
slavery extermination will be loud. But a day of reckoning is near at / 
hand. Her insane propagandism is working out its fruits. "TKThe people ) 
in the last elections have expressed their detestation of her doctrines. 
Even the people of New England, from Maine to Connecticut, .will begin 
to consider their position. The popular verdict is not yet fully heeded at 
Washington. The infatuation of Congress continues. But the Govern- 
ment and its administrators have felt the shock, and a dead lock, political 
and military, is the result. Montesquieu has well described ourc ondition : 
" There is in every nation a general public spirit upon which power itself 
is founded. When that power shocks that public spirit, the shock is com- 
municated to itself, and it necessarily comes to a standstill." Confisca- 
tions and Proclamations have produced this terrible paralysis of the State. 
When the people arouse from this terrible condition, and fully realize what 
it is and who are its authors, the anathema against the perfidious parricides 
of the North will hardly be less than that which followed the violence of 
the Southern traitors against the majority of the nation. [Cheers.] 

In conclusion. Democrats of New York, you have traced with me the 
footprints in history of this inveterate foe to our Democracy, the Puritan- 
ism of New England. You have seen its bitter waters gushing in the 
wilderness from Plymouth Rock, and running through history in the same 
old channel, until its latest movement now for negro emancipation. You 
have seen it poisoning the pulpit and the press with its dogmas. You 
have seen it silently boring hke a reptile into the mouuds of the Constitu- 
tion. You have seen the barriers give way and the flood rush in — a sea 
billowy with fraternal blood. It has obtained power, arms. We know 
how it has used them, and at what cost. War has been called a whole- 
sale gravedigger, who works for wages ! What wages? Ask the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, now in your city to raise fresh hundreds of millions. 






302 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

At what sacrifice ? Ask those who are bereaved and those who are wounded. 
Ask a quarter of a million of Northern, not to count Southern men, who 
have perished in the field or hospital. Alas ! they cannot answer. Their 
rude graves in the distant South answer. Fortunes totter ; industry is 
palsied ; bankruptcy threatens, for speculation riots around your moneyed 
centres. The tax gatherer, the embalming doctor, the nurse, and the army 
scavenger play their part in this great drama, and behind it all stands 
the gibbei'ing fiend of Abolition, determined to make the war, begun in 
honor and patriotism, end in hate and disunion ! It has akeady deter- 
mined not to allow the Democracy to save the Union. But by the God 
of our fathers ! thoiigh the Union be shattered ; though its bleeding frag- 
ments may seek temporary alliances East and West, the Democracy will, 
if it take a lustrum to do it, fight under the old constellated banner, 
making its order of march an order of battle, for the restoration of the 
Union as it was, by the supremacy of the Constitution as it is ! 
[Tremendous cheering, during which the audience rose to their feet. 
Three cheers were given for the speaker and three for Ohio.] Let the 
Middle, and Western, and border States firmly move on in the work. 
The dissonant din of these ideologists of New England will be drowned 
in the popular voice ; the fratricidal hate they have engendered will be 
assuaged, and into the lacerated bosom of this nation will be p(^ired the 
hallowed and healing spirit of mutual confidence and conciliation. Thus 
will the nation reform itself! [Tremendous and continued applause.] 

Mr. Cox closed by saying, that such confidence and conciliation could 
never come from the spirit of Puritanism ; but thanks to New England — 
aye, to New England — a better and more Christian spirit had been en- 
, shrined in the poetry of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a son of Massachusetts, 
whose beautiful lyric upon Carolina he had been requested to repeat to 
the audience by a New York Democrat now in Washington, Frederick 
S. Cozzens, himself an author known to the whole country. Mr. Cox 
then recited the following : 

" She has gone — she has left us in passion and pride — 
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side ! 
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow, 
And turned on her brother the face of a foe ! 

" 0, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, 
We can never forget that our hearts have been one ; 
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's name, 
From the fountain of blood with the finger of flame ! 

" You were always too ready to fire at a touch ; 
But wo said, ' She is hasty — she does not mean much.' 
We have scowled when you uttered some turbulent threat ; 
But Friendship still whispered, ' Forgive and forget.' 

*' Has our love all died out ? Have its altars grown cold ? 
Has the curse come at last which the fathers foretold ? 
Then Nature must teach us the strength of the chain 
That her petulant children would sever in vain. 

" They may fight till the buzzards are gorged with their spoil, 
Till the harvest grows black as it rots in its soil, 



I 



CIVIL -wJlr. 303 

Till the wolves and the catamounts troop from their caves, 
And the shark tracks the pirate, the lord of the waves. 

" In vain is the strife ! When its fury is past, 
Their fortunes must flow in one channel at last ; 
As the torrents that rush from the mountains of snow 
Roll mingled in peace through the valley below. 

" Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky ; 
Man breaks not the medal when God cuts the die ! 
Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel, 
The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal. 

" 0, Caroline, CaroUne, child of the sun. 
There are battles with fate that can never be won ! 
The star-flowering banner must never be furled. 
For its blossoms of light are the hope of the world ! 

" Go, then, our rash sister ! afar and aloof. 
Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof; 
But when your heart aches and your feet have grown sore, 
Remember the pathway that leads to our door ! " [Applause.] 



THE CONSCRIPTION BILL. 

EXEMPTION OF THE CLERGY SLANDERS UPON THE DEMOCRACY REPELLED STATE KIGHTS 

AS DEFINED BY MADISON AND HAMILTON EFFECT OF THE CONSCRIPTION. 

On the 26th of February, 1863, the House having under consideration 
the bill to call out the national forces, Mr. Cox said : Mr. Speaker, I am 
obliged to the Chair for the prompt manner in which he has protected my 
right to the floor, and for tiie emphasis with which he brought down the 
gavel for that purpose. [Laughter.] I hope now that I shall not be 
further interrupted. Mr. Speaker, I was somewhat amused and in- 
structed by what fell from my reverend brother [Mr. Fessenden] from 
Maine, who has just taken his seat. It was proper that he should defend 
his clerical brethren. But after the high-wrought eulogy Avhich he uttered 
in their behalf, I was surprised at the lame conclusion at which he 
arrived. How could he as a patriot argue that so valuable a class of 
citizens should be excluded from serving their country in the army ? If 
they are as worthy and as patriotic as he believes, will they seek exemp- 
tion? Tlie very argument, combining with other reasons which I may 
give, but from which he will doubtless dissent, compel me to oppose the 
exemption of the clergy from this sweeping conscription. There are 
some clergymen for whom I have an unbounded reverence and respect — 
men who preach the gospel of " peace on earth and good will to men." 
They do not turn the living word into reproach by " vain disputations." 
They do not create jar on earth and ill will to men. From the first settle- 
ment of the region from which the gentleman comes, down to the present 
time, the largest part of the clergy seem to have been specially com- 
missioned, in their own opinion, to read lectures upon political matters to 
the people of this country, and to aU mankind. They have descended 
from their spiritual elevation to grope amid the passions and cor- 



304: EIGHT TEAES IN CONGEESS. 

ruptions of partisan strife. They have thus divided the churches, and 
degraded the mission left them by their loving Master. 

Mr. S. C. Fessenden. I challenge the gentleman to produce the 
proof of that assertion. 

Mr. Cox. I refer the gentleman, for the proof, to New England his- 
tory, from the days of Cotton Mather and the burning of witches, down to 
the present unhappy time. Why, sir, let the dominant clergy of New Eng- 
land continue to have their way now, as they had it once when Catholics, 
Episcopalians, Baptists, and Quakers were persecuted, punished, exiled, 
and murdered for conscience sake, and the gentleman will live to witness, 
perhaps with transport. Episcopalian and Catholic clergymen garroted and 
burned in the streets of Boston. [Laughter.] 

Mr. S. C. Fessenden. Will the gentleman allow me now? 

Mr. Cox. I have no objection, if the gentleman wants to ask a ques- 
tion. 

Objected to by a member from the Republican side of the House. 

Mr. Cox. That objection does not come from this side. 

Mr. Speaker, there ig a certain class of preachers to whom gentlemen 
on this side of the House ai*e under no special obligations. They have 
prayed us frequently into the nethermost abysses. [Laughter.] And 
why? Because we belonged to that old Democratic party which has 
been coeval with this Government — which has never, as an organization, 
been unfaithful to the interests and honor of the whole country, and which 
has never lost its chivalric respect for the safeguards and immunities of 
the Union and Constitution. Simply to have affiliations Avith that party 
has always been sufficient to bring down the anathemas, by " bell, book, 
and candle," of those clergymen who now, through the ministerial member 
from Maine, seek exemption from the inconvenient consequences of the 
troubles which they have themselves been mainly instrumental in bring- 
ing upon our beloved land. Long before the radical politicians. North 
and South, began to rend the nation in their hate, these preachers had 
riven the churches in their crazed and demoniac fury. I ask you, men of 
the South yet remaining with us, as I ask you Northern Representatives, 
is any one more responsible for the present unhappy condition of the 
country than these firebrands of the sanctuary — North and South ? Have 
not the fiercest zealots of secession and abolition been found among those 
who have kindled on God's altar the unhallowed embers of sectional 
asperity ? The gentleman from Maine wants proof. Why, sir, it is easy 
enough to furnish it. Go back to the three thousand clergymen of New 
England, who, in the name of the Most High, felt themselves accredited 
to send to the Congress of the United States a special denunciation of 
Stephen A. Douglas for his championship of the rights of the people of 
the Territories. Their anti-slavery evangel was met by him with tlie same 
defiance which the Democracy displayed in the days of Jefferson, when 
the New England clergy reviled that apostle of our political faith. The 
impertinent and improper interference by a portion of the clergy in the 
politics of the country, is not peculiar to our day, though never before has 
it been so conspicuous as in fomenting the troubles which have culminated 
in this calamitous war. 

There arc two kinds of clergymen in this country. I have before me 



CIVIL WAR. 305 

a description of one class, with which I have no donbt gentlemen on the 
other side are more fomiliar than with those who minister in the church 
in which I happen to worship. [Laughter.] I will recite the descrip- 
tion : 

" A minister, whom hell had sent, 

To spread its blast where'er he went, 

And fling, as o'er our earth he trod, 

His shadow botvi'ixt man and God." 

Now, sir, all ministers who come within that definition I want to see 
enrolled in the army and marched to its front. There let them do their 
duty, and see whether they cannot help to put down this rebellion which 
they have been so long instigating. Let them suffer some of the conse- 
quenceiB that our brothers undergo in the Southwest and along the Rappa- 
hannock. I would not have them go merely as clerks, letter- writers, or. 
chaplains. Let them shoulder the twelve-pound musket, do picket duty, 
and trudge like our brave boys amid winter snows, spring mud, and sum- 
mer suns, under the packed knapsack, and my word for it, they will come 
back sanctified by grace. [Laughter.] After the eulogy pronounced 
upon the clergy by the gentleman from Maine, may we not presume that 
they would be in a better condition for the sacrifice, than many an unsanc- 
tified Democrat? "Would they not ascend into the realms of glory with 
less inconvenience or delay? [Laughter.] Very many of them, from 
my observation, would not be as much of a loss to the country as my 
clerical friend over the way would suppose. 

But, Mr. Speaker, I would not have addressed the gentleman from 
Maine in this style, had it not been that he rung into his speech over 
and over again, what has been rung into the speeches of other gentle- 
men on that side of the House since this debate began, as well as into 
newspapers and stump speeches, the usual quantity of malignant talk 
about " Copperheads," and the disloyal Democracy. A very beautiful 
mode of argumentation this ! It is calculated to produce a very pleasing 
impression on this side of the House ! The debate on this measure from 
its opening has been characterized by this tender affability of manner ! 
One Vv^ould have supposed it would have been wise to have made the effort 
to conciliate this side of the House in favor of this measure ; but you 
sought to conciliate nobody. War Democrats — Peace Democrats — to use 
your inapposite language, are all alike. My eloquent friend from New 
York [Mr. Steele], who has spoken so well for the Governor of his 
State, and the rights of his State, and who expressed his willingness to 
sustain, through the States, your calls for aid — lie is no exception. You 
sought not to conciliate my friend from Indiana [Mr. Holman], who has 
been laboring for the last two hours at my side to make this bill, if pos- 
sible, less objectionable by a substitute. He, too, has the fang and poison 
of the Copperhead. You sought not to conciliate any class of opinion, 
however loyal and conscientious. You were unwilling, when this bill 
came in first, to allow it to be scrutinized. You sought to force it 
through without amendments, without discussion ; and but for the deter- 
mined nerve of this side of the Chamber, you would have accomplished 
your purpose and passed the bill with all of its infernal enginery of oppres- 
sion. Gentlemen, you did not know us. We were determined in the first 
20 



306 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

place to have discussion ; and in the second place to get the bill back into 
a position where it could be amended, and as many of its obnoxious fea- 
tures removed as it Avas possible to remove in this Congress. What we 
resolved to do, that we have accomplished. Before I come to the discus- 
sion of the bill itself, I owe it to the people of my district to repel the 
charges made by you upon their representative. 

The three Republicans who have last spoken [Messrs. Dunn, Stevens, 
and Fessenden] have charged that we are disloyal to the country ; to the 
country which we love as well, I will not say better than you ; to that 
country which we love only less than we would love our Heavenly Father. 
From the beginning of the debate we have heard nothing but contemptu- 
ous scorn and contumely hurled against this side of the Hoxise. Do you 
believe that members of this House, though in a minority, who are your 
equals here, will silently permit such language to go unlashed? If we 
were dishonored at home, do you think we are craven enough to receive 
such epithets without giving scorn for scorn? But being in fact the ma- 
jority, having received the approbation of oiir constituents at home, do 
you imagine that we will sit here in timid crouching, and receive your con- 
tumely without making some fit reply? Do you expect that we wiU, tmder 
the forms of courtesy, mouth honeyed words for your abuse ? Do you im- 
agine we cannot tell denunciation from debate ? You forget that we 
come fresh from the people, covered all over with their generous approba- 
tion. My eloquent friend from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] told you last 
night that you were but corpses stalking against public decency, for a 
short time only, before the public gaze. [Laughter.] A nice party, in- 
deed, this company of corpses, to talk to us, the Representatives of the 
people ! [Laughter.] The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Dunn], con- 
scious of his defunct condition, talked to us, as he confessed, from the 
confines of his sepulchre, 

" Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound ; 
Mine ears attend the cry." [Great laughter.] 

If you gentlemen who play the political phantom wish to carry out the 
proper definition of a ghost, cease to squeak and gibber your abolitionism 
and go back into your cerements, for daylight, thank God ! has begun to 
dawn. [Laughter.] Do you suppose that we, who are fresh from the 
people, have any reason to distract our minds at what you utter against 
us? Do you suppose, for instance, that we who represent Ohio, where 
we had nineteen members of Congress to elect, and under an infamous 
gerrymander which allowed us only two democrats, and who will come 
back to the next Congress fourteen to your five, are to be lectured by you 
for'disloyalty ? Do you take us to be as contemptible as yourselves ? You 
ghosts of the dead past mistake the temper of our constituents as you have 
mistaken us. We know our rights under the Constitution. We have a 
sound record, to Avhich we can forever point ; for we have stood by the 
country when you failed it. We have, under the ineradicable love of law 
and order, stood by your own Administration when you have stigmatized 
and denounced it. We did our best in the Congress before this, to settle 
these troubles, when adjustment was easy. We labored with anxious care, 
that peace might continue in the land. The people believe that you were 



CIVIL WAR. 307 

recreant then ; that you arc responsible for the failure to settle these difficul- 
ties by compromise. You know that the people so believe, for that was a 
part of their decision at the recent elections. If you still entertain any 
doubt about your recreancy and responsibility, read this letter, recently 
produced in the Illinois Legislature by Hon. Mr. Hays, from Judge Doug- 
las, dated the 29th of December, 1860. In it he says : 

" Tlic South loould take my proposition if the Republicans would agree to it. But the 
extremes North and South hold off, and arc precipitating the country into revolution and 
civil war. 

" While I can do no act which recognizes or countenances the doctrine of secession, 
my policy is peace, and I will not consider the question of war until every effort has been 
made for peace, and all hope shall have vanished. When that time comes, if unfortu- 
nately it shall come, I v.ill then do what it becomes an American Senator to do on the 
then state of facts. Many of the Repuhlican leaders desire a dissolution of the Union, 
■.nid urge war as a means of accomplishing disunion ; while others are union men in good 
i'aith. We have now reached the point where a compromise, on the basis of mutual con- 
cession, or disunion and war are inevitable. I prefer a fair and just compromise." 

If you still doubt, read again anotiier letter from the same honest and 
noble man, with which the country is familiar, in which he attributed the 
defeat of all amicable adjustments to the partisan desire of the Republican 
Senators to confirm certain appointments by the (then) incoming Admin- 
istration. The Republican Senators wished to have a majority in the Sen- 
ate for this purpose. But for this petty political object. Judge Douglas 
thought that they would have passed some compromise. They wanted 
the seceded States to go out — they wanted the Southern Senators to leave 
the Senate. Because, without their absence, the Senate would never have 
approved of such abolition appointments as Cassius M. Clay as Minister 
to Petersburg ; which I believe he yet holds in connection with Simon 
Cameron, and a major-generalship in the army [laughter], and Avhich 
offices he is filling to the President's contentment, by philandering around 
Willard's Hotel in these several capacities [laughter], if indeed he has 
any capacity. [Laughter.] The Republican Senators knew that the 
President might send in the nomination of such a man as Carl Schurz as 
Minister to Spain, a German abolition infidel, who brought to this coun- 
try the belief that license was liberty, and that Almighty God was a fig- 
ment of the brain — some strange abstract entity, with the concrete 
attribute of drinking lager beer in the regions above the sun. [Great 
laugliter.] They wanted to confirm another class of abolitionists like the 
inveterate abolitionist who used to represent the Ashtabula district of 
Ohio in this House ; I mean the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, now Consul- 
Gencral to the Canadas. Tliey wanted to confirm Helper, the author of 
the Helper book endorsed by the Republican members of Congi'ess, and 
which urged robbery, murder, and insurrection, in order, by violence, to 
rid the country of slavery. I might enlarge the catalogue of abolitionists 
imtil the House were surfeited. Hence it was that Judge Douglas de- 
clared that the Republicans were responsible for not making an amicable 
adjustment of our troubles. In his opinion, they were willing to welcome 
civil war, and all its attendant horrors, from the mere greed for office, and 
to reward the anarchs and destructionists of the land. Hence it is that, 
before God and the country, I hold you, on the testimony of Douglas, 
responsible for the failure to settle these difficulties. 



308 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGKESS. 

But after all had failed through Republican partisanship and greed for i 
office, we came to the extra session of Congress. You will remember ' 
that, with Douglas, we doubted if ever war could reclaim the Southern 
States. We plead — ^you know how even so humble a member as myself 
plead — against the arbitrament of the sword for the settlement of these 
feuds of the sections. But we plead in vain. Douglas told you war was 
disunion. But war came ! It is unnecessary for me to say who struck 
the first blow. It is idle now to argue who provoJced the blow that was 
first struck. You know it all. We came to the extra session of 1861. 
We were still, as ever, loyal, law-abiding. We were willing to do our all 
for the Government. Sadly we acted as the coadjutors of force. But 
the great drama of blood having been begun, not by our aid or consent, 
we acted on the side of the Government — loyally, firmly, sadly. We 
could not do otherwise, so help us God. 

The record of that session will show how we supported the Adminis- 
tration, which we had not contributed to place in power. I remember 
well when, on the 15th of July, 1861, General McClernand, of Illinois, 
offered the following resolution (House Journal, 1st session, S7th Congress, 
p. 87) : 

" Whereas, a portion of the people of the United States, in violation of their consti- 
tutional obligations, have taken up arms against the National Government, and are now 
striving, by aggressive and iniquitous war, to overthrow it and break up the union ol 
these States : therefore, 

" Resolved, That this House hereby pledges itself to vote for any amount of money 
and any number of men which may be necessary to insure the speedy and eflfectual sup- 
pression of said rebellion, and the permanent restoration of the Federal authority every- 
where within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States." 

I find nearly every member of this House, upon this side, voting 
for that resolution. There were but five votes against it ; and of those, 
three are now absent and openly disloyal to the Government. Did you 
want any thing more — any thing better than that? You sought harmony ' 
among all parties at that time. All the men and all the money that was 
wanted was granted by our votes. Your President asked for fotir hun- 
dred thousand men, and we gave him five hundred thousand ; he asked for 
four hundred millions of dollars, and we gave him five hundred millions. 
Whenever he came here asking men and money, we gave them to him. 
Could we do more? Were we disloyal men for that? What followed? 
Shortly afterwards the venerable member from Kentucky [Mr. Crttten- 
den] oflTered his resolution as to the purposes of the war. AH of us joined 
in its adoption. We gave it our adhesion, as the direction which we were 
to follow in the pursuit of this war against this rebellion. Wliat more 
could we do and be faithful? Could we have done less? We were only 
pursuing what we had declared before in our speeches here. I remember 
a scene which was recalled to my mind by some remarks from the gentle- 
man from Indiana [Mr. Dunn]. I v/as a member of this Congress when 
State after State sent here their ordinances of secession. I recall the first 
motion that was made by a member from Florida [Mr. Hawkins], who sat 
in that scat occupied by my friend from Maryland [Mr. Crespield], to be 
excused from service upon a committee raised to compromise these troubles. 
He gave us as a reason that his State was already resolved to secede. I 



CIVIL WAE. 309 

then said that I would not vote to excuse him, when he gave such a sedi- 
tious reason. And when afterwards secession spee^es were made, I had 
the honor, as the first member of this House, to struggle for the floor with 
my friend, General McClernand, to denounce the doctrine of secession as 
alien to the Constitution, bad in theory, and worse in practice. I picture 
now the scene which took place here, after General McClernand and my- 
self had concluded our speeches, and when the present Postmaster-Gen- 
eral of the Confederate States [Mr. Reagan] denounced us as the tail of 
the abolition kite. Great God ! that I should ever have lived to have had 
such a reproach even from a rebel. [Laughter.] 

"We who have been striving to keep this war in its proper direction, so as 
tiicreby to make it short and successful ; we who have stood here from the 
first to sustain this Government and this Administration which we did not 
contribute to place in power, do not deserve the contemptuous reproaches 
cast upon us by ingrates upon the other side. Copperheads are we ? Cop- 
perheads ! I would not follow this pitiable example of discourtesy by 
speaking of other sorts of heads. [Laughter.] I would not hurl such 
epithets across this chamber. It would be unparliamentary, and I forego 
the luxury of being out of order here. I know the gentlemen are dead 
heads, and that is the reason why — on the principle of " nisi honum, nil 
mortuis " — I speak of them with respect. [Laughter.] It has been 
laid down by the best ethical v/riters upon free government, that it is 
perfectly right and proper to encourage criticism upon the administration 
of public afftxirs. We were taught that in the best English literature. 
John Milton dedicated his grandest work, the " Areopogitica," to the 
defence of free speech and unlicensed printing. Even in the Corps 
Legislatif of France now, the fullest debate is allowed to the opponents of 
the reigning dynasty and its measures, even of war. The noblest use of 
free speech in this or any free country is to criticize closely the political 
conduct of our agents. Hence in England it became a part of the Consti- 
tution to have what is called a " constitutional opposition." There is al- 
ways a party out of power to watch the party in power. Why? Because, 
as was remarked the otlier day, power tends to slide from the many to the 
few. It tends to aggrandize itself. It grows by what it feeds on. A 
healthy state of the body politic requires a party at all times, standing 
upon the fundamental law as the basis of its existence, and fearlessly vigi- 
lant against the encroachments of power. This is the present mission of 
the Democracy. We assume now no further responsibility. We have 
never failed to appeal to the Constitution as the guide of our conduct. We 
who have opposed this and similar bills, have done so because we thought 
them infringements upon the Constitution. It is for this that gentlemen 
on the other side hurl at us epithets of " secession sympathizers," " dis- 
loyal men." I am yet to learn that any member upon this side has yet 
gone outside of the proper constitutional opposition to this Administration. 
You cannot point to a single act, or to a single vote, or to a single speech 
uttered by us, looking to any opposition to this Government. Our oppo- 
sition is to the continued and persistent breaches of our Constitution. 
Every vote upon this side, and every speech, has been in favor of some 
mode, one mode by one, and another mode by another, of sustaining this 
Government to the end. No proposition for a separation of the Union 



310 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGKESS. 

has ever come from this side of the chamber. None, none. The only 
proposition of that sor^, as was remarked the other day by my friend from 
Indiana [Mr. Holman], emanated from a gentleman who has always 
acted with the other side [Mr. Conway]. He tried the other day to ex- 
plain his position. I have since read his resolution in order to get the 
benefit of his explanation. But as I read his resolution, it says, as re- 
ported in his printed speech, " that the Executive be, and he is hereby re- 
quested to issue a general order to all commanders of forces in the several 
military departments of the United States to discontinue offensive opera- 
tions against the enemy, and to act for the future entirely on the de- 
fensive." And further : 

" Resolved, That the Executive be, and he is further requested to enter into negotia- 
tions with the authorities of the Confederate States, with reference to a cessation of hos- 
tilities, based on the following proposition : Recognition of the independence of the Con- 
federate States." 

What does that mean? It was not offered by a Democrat. No Cop- 
perhead offered it. What does it mean? Gentlemen upon this side of 
the chamber denounced that resolution. No man upon that side has yet 
risen to denounce it. 

Mr. Blake. I want to say to the gentleman, that every gentleman 
npon this side of the House denounced it by his vote. 

Mr. Cox. I know they voted against it. I wish they would confine 
their denunciations of the Democracy to their silent votes. 

Mr. Blake. That we are doing. 

Mr. Cox. I do not mean to include my colleague among those who 
have so offensively denounced Democrats. But all who have spoken have 
denounced us, although they know that ^YQ have again and again asserted 
that we are for the Union at all hazards, and by every means which will 
in our judgment secure its integrity. We were for this Union by war 
when war seemed a necessity. We are for this Union by peace when- 
ever peace is honorable and possible. We are opposed to any war liku 
that for the abolition of slavery, that vnM make disunion possible. We are 
opposed to any peace that will mutilate the Republic. That is the " Cop- 
perhead " policy, and I ask my friend from Maine to pray over it to-night, 
and see if he cannot think better of us. [Laughter.] Mark the Demo- 
cratic policy : No peace with the idea of dismemberment ; no war that is 
fatal to the Union ; eveiy thing for the Union under the Constitution ; we 
will never break that instrument to bring back the Union ; for when the 
Constitution is broken, there is no Union, but a unity of territory, a des- 
potism of power. 

Mr. Speaker, I desire now to discuss some of the features of the bill 
before us. I will be very brief ; for they have been thoroughly dissected 
by members upon this side of the House. I want to refer to only one or 
two propositions in that connection. I proposed, tAvo days since, to 
amend the bill by inserting the word "white" in the first section. At 
that time the gentleman from New York [Mr. Olin] advised us that no 
amendments would be permitted at all, and no discussion either. One 
good thing we have gained by this discussion at least, and that is, that if 
this bill is to pass at all, it will pass in a less obnoxious shape. The 



CIVIL WAE. 311 

leader of this House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Stevens, 
in the speech he made a while ago, proposed radical amendments. 

The Speaker pr-o tern. The gentleman will suspend his remarks 
while the Clerk reads a clause from the Manual. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

" No person ia speaking is to mention a member then present by his name, but to 
describe him by his seat in the House, or who spoke last, or on the other side of the 
question." 

Mr. Vallandigham. It is always in order to name a member after 
having described him. 

Mr. Cox. No, I do not think it is perfectly in order. I differ with 
my colleague. It has become a bad habit here, and I have only followed 
the precedent set me by distinguished members. 

The Speaker pro tern. The gentleman will proceed in order. 

Mr. Cox. I am very glad the Speaker made that point on me, for I 
shall take it more goodnaturedly than some others might have done. 

The Speaker j^ro tem. [Mr. Dawes]. That is the reason why the 
point was made on the gentleman. 

Mr. Cox. I mean, then, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who is 
Chairman of the Coiimaittee of Ways and Means ; the gentleman who has 
such a chronic dislike to Democrats that he always lectures them at the 
end of his speeches [laughter] ; the gentleman who said he was sick of 
hearing this talk about the Constitution, who did not want the old Union 
restored. The Speaker will now recognize whom I mean. [Laughter.] 
If I am not explicit enough, I will describe him as the gentleman who 
stated a great many apocryphal things, and among them, that all the 
Democrats stayed at home to vote while the Republicans are the belli- 
gerent part of the people ; the gentleman who undertook, in his speech to- 
night, to destroy the well-earned fame of a general born in his own State 
— General McClellan — an undertaking that all Pennsylvania, with all her 
.iron, and all her tariffs, and all her Camerons, and all her robberies, can 
snever accomplish. [Laughter.] Perhaps I am not yet explicit enough. 
rThe Chair will know whom I mean Avhen I refer to a speech made by a 
distinguished member from Massachusetts, now in the Chair, about com- 
posing political difficulties by the gentle amenities of horse contracts. 
Now, this gentleman whom I have just described, offered to amend this 
bill in several important particulars, and, among the rest, he proposed to 
strike out the words " authorizing provost marshals summarily to arrest 
for treasonable practices." Humph ! We have come to that ! You are 
getting along pretty well for dead men. [Laughter.] Go on a day or two 
longer Avith this discussion, and you will ch-op the bill altogether ; for when 
you shall have blotted that out of the bill, you will take the meanest sting 
out of it. If there be one thing that the people I represent fear and de- 
spise most, it is, that these miserable inquisitors, created by this bill, these 
sneaking spies, these pliant servitors of power, called provost marshals, 
spooned off the scum of the Abolition party of the North, should have power 
to pry in and around the homes of quiet and loyal citizens to play the in- 
former upon Democrats and Conservatives, drag them to the Bastiles of 
the Administration, not because they are disloyal, but because they happen 
to differ in opinion with their fellow-citizens about this war and its con- 



312 EIGHT YEAKS EST CONGKESS. 

duct, and this Administration and its conduct. I congratulate you that 
you have saved many provost marshals from the rope. The chairman of 
the Military Committee, when we started this debate, said he would not 
allow any amendments, not even to effect this object. But you are not 
entitled to any credit for making this amendment. You have been forced 
by the cogent eloquence of the debate upon this side of the chamber, to 
withdraw your "treasonable practices" from the bill. So much for de- 
bate. We have made a little by it at least ; and now I hope that some 
one upon the other side, like the gentleman from Pennsylvania, will 
progress a little further, and agree first to insert the word " white " in the 
first section of the bill, so that, instead of reading " all able-bodied male 
citizens of the United States," it shall read, " all able-bodied white male 
citizens of the United States." It is only a verbal amendment. [Laugh- 
ter.] Suppose you consider it over night. We may all get together, 
after a little more debate, and agree to kill the bill entirely. 

There is another objection to this bill, which has been urged here, 
and which was most eloquently urged by my colleague [Mr. White]. It 
is this : This bill breaks down not only the rights of the States, but the 
executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the States. It infringes 
the letter and spirit of the Constitution. It seeks to take from the States 
certain rights over their own militia — a right never to be yielded by a free 
peoi:)le without dishonor and danger. How is that objection met by gen- 
tlemen on that side ? Not as it was met in the other branch of Congress ; 
for there it was not pretended that this bill was not intended to call out the 
militia. Plere, it is a bill for enrolling and calling out the national forces, 
and for other purposes, as if you could, by a dash of the pen, change the 
nature and purpose of this measure. When this bill was first reported in 
the Senate, all admitted that it was a bill to call out the militia ; and its lan- 
guage, but not its scope or effect, is changed only for the purpose of avoid- 
ing the attacks that would be made upon it on account of its breaking 
down the rights of the States over the militia. Now there is an army of 
the United States, just as well known as the militia of the States. The 
former is subject to the command of the Chief Magistrate, and completely 
controlled by the rules and regulations made here ; the latter is not subject 
to the Federal Government, until called into the service of the United 
States, in pursuance of the Federal Constitution and laws. But gentle- 
men say that this is a bill for creating or increasing the regular army, and 
that there is no limit to our power over that subject. Well, if this be 
true, and this bill is executed, there will be no militia left in the States 
after this regular army is constituted. You sweep out of being the whole 
militia of the States into the Federal control. You leave the States un- 
protected, so far as the militia protects them. This bill is, to all intents 
and purposes, a bill to call forth the militia of the States ; but it does not 
make the call according to the Constitution and the law. The militia is to 
be called out, under this bill, directly by the President or his suboi'dinate 
federal agents acting upon the individual citizens. It never was the cus- 
tom of the Government so to call them. They should be called through 
the intervention of the States, and in that way alone. I need not refer 
gentlemen to the articles of the Constitution on this subject. They are 
familiar. I wiU read, however, the second section of the second article : 



CIVIL WAR. 313 

" The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy of the United 
States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the 
United States." 

Not wliile they ai-e bein.f^ enrolled, but " when called into the acmal ser- 
vice of the United States," is the President the Commander of the militia 
of the States. In my judgment, then, the Federal Government has no 
authority over the militia until it is called into the service of the United 
States. By another section, the Constitution of the United States author- 
izes Congress 

" To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress 
insurrection, and repel invasions. 

" To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing 
such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States." 

You may provide for their organization. You may provide for their 
enrolment, which is a part of the organization. You may provide for 
arming them. You may provide the mode and manner in which they 
shall be disciplined. But you cannot do that by your Federal Executive. 
That is to be done by the States themselves. They are authorized to do 
it, and the Federal Government is excluded from that office. That is the 
opinion of the best commentator on the Constitution, Judge Story. I re- 
fer to vol. iii. sec. 1208 : 

" The question, when the authority of Congress over the militia becomes exclusive, 
must esseuti:illy depend upon the fact when they are to be deemed in the actual service 
of the United States. There is a clear distinction between calling forth the militia and 
their being in actual sei'vice. They are not contemporaneous acts, nor neca^sarily identi- 
cal in their constitutional bearings. The President is not Commander-in-Chief of the mi- 
litia except whan in actual service, and not when they are merely ordered into service. 
They are subjected to martial law only when in actual service, and not merely when called 
forth, before they have obeyed the call." 

One of the sections of this bill proposes to subject the men who may 
be drafted to martial law, to deprive them of the legal right of being 
tried for criminal offences by a jury of their peers, before they are. mus- 
tered into the service of the United States. Such a power is not conferred 
by the Constitution. It wiU be resisted as a usurpation. In this connec- 
tion I refer to Elliott's Debates, pages 287, 288, and 294, to show that 
Judge Story is justified in his construction, by the language of those who 
were contemporaneous with the formation of the Constitution. 

It is unnecessary for me, Mr. Speaker, to comment on that commenta- 
tor. Judge Story lays down the constitutional interpretation explicitly. 
If you int'end to take these men as the militia of the country— and you 
mean nothinp- else — you cannot do it except by the intervention of the 
States themselves. There is another clause of the Constitution (article 
2d of the amendments) which reserves to the States, for a vital purpose, 
the control of their own militia : 

" A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right ot 
the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." 

Let this Federal Government beware how it seeks a conflict about the 
clearly reserved rights of the States. The practice of arbitrary arrests, 
the past year and a half, is not calculated to make future arrests of citi- 
zens either pleasant or safe for the minions of Federal power. 



314 EIGHT TEAES m CONGRESS. 

Now, if the Constitution means any thing, it means that in no emer- 
gency shall the States of this Union lose the power to control their own 
militia, for their own State purposes, except when it is merged in the 
actual service of the United States. By this bill you leave no power in 
the States to officer or direct their militia. The troops of Ohio may be 
mingled miscellaneously with those from Maine. There is a wise reason 
why the militia should be considered and kept as an institution of the 
States. You will find that reason in the very genius and structure of the 
federal system. We cannot, in these times, too often recur to the early 
expounders of the Constitution. I hold to the Jeffersonian and Madiso- 
nian construction of that instrument, with respect to the rights of States. 
Nowhere do I find the tenets of this school so correctly yet so familiarly 
expounded as in the Private Coi'respondence of Mr. Madison, published 
for private distribution by my friend J. C. McGuire, of this city, and to 
whom I am indebted for the volume before me. Mr. Madison (page 119) 
defines the relations implied by the terms Union, Federal, National, and 
State, in a letter written in September, 1829, wherein he says : 

" That the Constitution of the United States was created by the people composing the 
respective States, who alone had the right ; that they organized the Government into legis- 
lative, executive, and judiciary departments, delegating thereto certain portions of power, 
to be exercised over the whole, and reserving the other portions to themselves respec- 
tively. As these distinct portions of power were to be exercised by the General Govern- 
ment and by the State Governments, by each within limited spheres ; and as, of course, 
controversies concerning the boundaries of their power would happen, it was provided 
that they should be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, so constituted as 
to be as impartial as it could be made by the mode of appointment and responsibility for 
the judges. Is there, then, no remedy for usurpations in which the Supreme Court of the 
United States concur ? Yes, constitutional remedies ; remonstrances and instructions ; 
recurring elections and impeachments ; amendment of Constitution, as provided by itself, 
and exemplified in the 11th article limiting the suability of the States. These are re- 
sources of the States against the General Government, resulting from the relations of the 
States to that Government, while no corresponding control exists in the general over the 
individual govermncnts, all of whose functionaries are independent of the United States 
in their appointment and responsibihty. In all the views that may be taken of questions 
between the State Governments and the General Government, the awful consequences of a 
final rupture and dissolution of the Union should never for a moment be lost sight of. 
Such a prospect must be deprecated, must be shuddered at by every friend to his country, 
to liberty, to the happiness of man. For, in the event of a dissolution of the Union, an 
impossibility of ever renewing it is brought home to every mind by the difficulties encoun- 
tered in cstablisliing it. The propensity of all communities to divide, when not pressed 
into a unity by external danger, is a truth well understood. There is no instance of a 
people, inhabiting even a small island, if remote from foreign danger, and sometimes in 
spite of that pressure, who are not divided into alien, rival, hostile tribes. The happy 
union of these States is a wonder ; their Constitution a miracle ; their example the hope 
of Liberty throughout the world. Woe to the ambition that would meditate the destruc- 
tion of either." 

I trust and pray that this House will not, by passing this bill, hazard 
the fearful consequences of a further disruption of the Federal ties, by in- 
trenching upon the rights of the States ; that at least they will seek first, 
as Mr. Madison suggests, the judiciary, as the arbiter of these mooted 
questions of power, before embarking this troubled people upon new seas 
of blood, amidst other and worse storms of conflicting passion. 

Not alone to Jefferson and Madison, or the Supreme Court, will I go 
for the rule of construction as to the Constitution. Even that great apos- 



crviL WAK. 315 

tie of consolidation, Hamilton, in order to secure the adoption of the Con- 
stitution by his own State of New York, presented this exposition of our 
Government : 

" If the State Governments were to be abolisbed, the question would wear a different 
face ; but this idea is inadmissible. They are absolutely necessary to the system. Their 
existence must form a leading principle in the most perfect constitution we could form. 
I insist that it can never be the interest or desire of the national legislature (much less 
the President) to destroy the State Governments. It can derive no advantage from such 
a result ; but, on the contrary, would lose an indispensable support, a necessary aid, in 
executing the laws and conveying the influences of government to the doors of the peo- 
ple. The Union is dependent on the will of the State Governments for its Chief Magis- 
trate and its Senate. The blow aimed at the members must give a fatal wound to the 
head, and the destruction of the States must be at once political suicide. Can the Na- 
tional Government be guilty of this madness ? * * And again I have stated to the 
committee abundant reasons to prove the entire safety of the State Governments and of 
the people. I wisl\ the committee to remember that the Constitution, under examination, 
is framed upon truly republican principles, and that, as it is expressly designed to provide 
for the common protection and general welfare of the United States, it must be utterly 
repugnant to tliis Constitution to subvert the State Governments or oppress the people." 

This doctrine of State rights, Mr. Speaker, does not carry us into 
secession, for, accordingto the doctrine laid down by Jefferson, Madison, and 
others, there is a line drawn, beyond which State rights cannot go, but 
within which there is perfect immunity to the exercise of powers by the 
States in their separate and sovereign capacity. If the State is aggrieved, 
it can neither nullify nor secede. Mr. Jefferson, in his letter to Cartright, 
referred to in the " Private Correspondence," denied the right of any 
number of single States to arrest the execution of a law of Congress, or 
secede from the Federal system. A Convention of the States, imder the 
Constitution, he hailed " as the peaceable remedy for all the conflicting 
claims of power in our compound Government." In the future complica- 
tions to which this and similar bills will give rise, I can see no other than 
the Madisonian remedy for our safety and regeneration — A convention 
OP THE States under the Constitution. 

I believe that this bill not only subv(jrts the State Governments, but 
that it will suppress the people. It breaks dowTi the barrier "which the 
people ei'ected against consolidated power ; for never in the history of this 
or any other Government has such a stupendous power been reposed in 
one man, as the power reposed by this bill in the President of the United 
States. It makes this Government, so guarded in its delegation of power, 
so full of reservations to the source of all power, the people, an irrespon- 
sible despotism, worse than that of France, and more tyrannical than that 
of Russia. You have already given to this Administration the purse ; you 
now throw the sword into the scale, and nothing is left to the people but 
abject submission or resistance. It becomes Congress to see to it before 
it intrusts such a power to any one man : first, whether it is constitutional ; 
and, if constitutional, whether it is expedient to intrust it to the present 
Chief Magistrate of the country. For my part, sir, I do not trust the 
present Chief Magistrate. I have my reasons for it. These reasons 
spring out of his conduct with regard to the slavery question. Again and 
again, beginning w;th his inaugural message, down to the last conference 
which he had with the border State members of Congress, Avho now sit 
around me, he asseverated that he would not interfere in any w^ay with the 



316 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

constitutional rights of the States with regard to negro slavery. He said that 
he had no right and no inclination thus to interfere ; and he kept his word 
for a brief time. But abolition pressure was brought to bear upon him. 
Abolitionists improved every opportunity to poison his mind, and to salute 
his ear with their flatteries. They made him believe that he was the 
saviour of the black race. In the very face of his own declarations to the 
contrary, and after he had promised solemnly to the border State Con- 
gressmen, in a public conference with them, that he would do nothing to 
injure either the sensibilities or the interests of their States with regard to 
slavery, he issued that proclamation which has been so fatal to the army, 
fatal to "a united North," fatal to the Government, and will be, I fear, 
fatal to this Union, unless gentlemen on the other side come up boldly and 
manfully and demand of him to repudiate it forever. Let them prepare 
him for the retraction by the repeal of their confiscation measures as use- 
less, impotent, and unconstitutional. Let the President then follow them 
and withdraw his proclamation. Let us start anew. Go back to the 
Crittenden resolutions, or if you cannot, by war, restore the Federal au- 
thority, try some other mode. Withdraw the negro entirely from your 
counsels and conduct, and make one grand effort to preserve this Gov- 
ernment of white men. Will you do it? If you would resolve thus 
to act, you would need no conscription to increase and inspirit your 
army. You would then invigorate the j)ublic heart. You would restore 
again the public confidence. There is your path. Will you follow it? 
I believe that you will get no men under this bill. You will get no 
men through your despicable and irresponsible provost marshals. This 
bill will only make trouble. I fear more than I dare say. I fear you do 
not expect to get men under this bill. If the bill means any thing in 
reason, it is a bill to enslave the people of the North, and not a bill 
to put down the rebellion. It gives you the power to annihilate the ballot 
box, destroy personal liberty, and scatter your spies and informers all 
over the country as thick as the locusts of Egypt. I protest against it as 
a needless torture to the citizen, and as a cruel insult to the patriotism of 
a proud and free people. I wish I could see in this bill any thing good. 
It will simply irritate the people of the North. It will not bring about 
that harmony among them which is indispensable to the success of an 
army against this rebellion. 

You have tried many expedients against our warning, and failed. At 
first you had the whole North, twenty millions of people, forgetting their 
divisions and sustaining the Government on the plain question for the 
restoration of the Constitution. You had victories on that policy. Your 
organs, like the " Tribune," boasted, after the fall of Sumter, that 

" All party prejudices and passions were forgotten, and the new Administration, 
strengthened by an assurance of popular confidence, stood before the world the unques- 
tioned reprcsenkitive of the whole loyal people of the Union." 

Who and what has changed all that? Your President and his aboli- 
tion advisers and policy. The proclamation sounded ; and lo ! the re- 
bellion was to fall. " The war would not last till Christmas," said 
the zealots of the hour. " By a single blow the President has palsied 
the rebellion," they said again. Fatal delusions ! But will you learn 



crviL WAE, 317 

nothing? This bill will prove more impotent against the South and 
more mischievous in the North than your proclamations and confisca- 
tions. 

A good deal has been said about the Democratic party not being loyal. 
"Why, sir, Ave went from this Hall at the close of the last session of Con- 
gress and found the President's call for volunteers among the people. We 
went before our constituents and asked for soldiers to fill the new regi- 
ments called for by the Governors in pursuance of that call. My colleague 
over the way [Mr. Harrison] will bear me witness with what zeal we 
endeavored to fill our quotas in order to save our respective counties from 
a draft. lu my own county, at the capital of the State, we succeeded in 
raising the requisite number, and there was no draft. My colleagues 
[Mr. White, Mr. Morris, Mr. Noble, and others] found it not hard by 
their appeals to fill the call in their localities. This, however, was before 
the proclamation. When that masterpiece of folly and treachery was 
issued, fm'ther enlistments became almost impossible. We could then 
make no more speeches for recruits. Why ? We had told the people 
.that this was a war for the Union and for the Constitution. When it was 
thus perverted by base treachery and falsehood from this, its proper pur- 
pose, we took our appeal directly to the people, and denounced the treachery 
and unveiled the falsehood of this Administration. The people under- 
stood and indorsed us. I might refer you to resolutions passed by the 
Democratic Convention of Ohio, wherein we said to the people that the 
Democracy were willing to join hand in hand with any citizen of the State 
to strengthen and invigorate the Government and suppress the rebellion. 
They deprecated the divisions and distractions which the abolitionists were 
forcing upon the country as hostile to its best interests. 



NEGRO SOLDIERS. 

NEGROES IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR — OBJECT OF THE BILL EFFECT ON EXCIIANGE OF 

PRISONERS DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT TO THE WAR. 

Delivered on January 30, 1863. 

Mr. Cox said : I want to call the attention of the House, and espe- 
cially of the present occupant of the chair [Mr. McPiierson], to the 
remarks made by him in reference to the employment of negroes in the 
Revolutionary war. I regret, sir, that you have been elevated to the chair 
at this inopportune time ; but I have no doubt that you can retire with 
grace, to repel any thing that I might say that is either untrue in history, 
or that involves a false inference. If 1 understand you, sir, you argue 
that there was a settled policy in revolutionary times for the reception of 
negi'oes into our service. That is not correct. A careful reading of his- 
tory will show it. [Mr. McPhersok here left the chair, calling Mr. Shef- 
field thereto.] I am perfectly willing, Mr. Speaker, to agree v.'ith the 
gentleman, that negroes were here and there used in the Revolution. 
There were a number of instances where some were employed — not 



318 EIGHT YEAES m CONGRESS. 

in regiments or brigades, as it is claimed here ; bat many blacks, and 
perhaps several companies, were nsed in various States during the Revo- 
lution. The most conspicuous instance was that of Rhode Island. She 
called over three hundred at one time, when there was an overpowering 
necessity for every man in that little colony to be raised ; but, sir, these were 
sporadic cases, here and there a negro ; here and there, and but rarely, a 
company. There was no system of colonial policy by which black men 
were organized. There were some black men in the army in despite of 
law and orders against it ; some who were enlisted when there was no law 
on the subject ; and in a few cases, there were black men enlisted under 
the law of certain of the colonies ; but I believe all this was done under 
the protest of the Continental Congress. 

Mr. McPheeson. I do not wish to interrupt the gentleman ; but I shall 
be very glad to have a few minutes, after he has finished his speech, to 
give my version of the facts of the case. 

Mr. Cox. The only authentic return, which research can discover, 
of negroes employed in the Revolution, is one made on the 24th of August, 
1778, on the call of the Continental Congress, and the whole number of 
negroes present in the army then, of all conditions and grades of service, 
was seven hundred and fifty-five, of which five hundred and eighty-sis 
were reported as present. I know not how they were used particularly ; 
but doubtless they were used as servants, or bootblacks, or teamsters, or 
private soldiers. If the gentleman has any thing more authentic, I would 
like to see it. But, as I see my friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] 
listening with some interest, I will call attention to the revolutionary pol- 
icy of Massachusetts. The Governor of that State has gone home with 
a carte blanche in his pocket to raise negro soldiers — if I may use that 
white term with reference to this black business. 

Mr. Aldrich (in his seat). Carte black. 

Mr. Cox. Yes, very black. I know it is the supposition among per- 
sons who do not understand the meaning of this matter, that the object of 
Governor Andrew is to raise all the negroes he can, and ship them out of 
his State. I know that he refused to have other negroes come into his 
State from the South. Now, sir, Massachusetts has a very peculiar rec- 
oi'd in reference to this matter in the Revolution. As early as 1774 this 
subject was so talked about as to be brought to the notice of the Conti- 
nental Congress. It was talked about by some of the humanitarians of 
that day. They wanted to use the negroes, not so much for the purpose 
of defending colonial independence as for the purpose of fighting for ne- 
gro liberty. There were men then not unlike the gentleman from Illi- 
nois [Mr. Love joy]. Yesterday, when trying to disguise the fact that 
he was for waging this war for negro liberty, before he got through the 
paragraph he confessed the whole truth by saying : 

" ' But,' say gentlemen, ' you want to do away with slavery.' ' Certainly.' ' Why ? ' 
' Because in suppressing the rebellion and preserving the Union, it is necessary as a means, 
and not as an end ; although God knows the means are just such means as I desire to be 
used. We gain a double object.' ' That I never deny.' " 

" A double object," is it ? I think, sir, that the dominant portion of 
the party on the other side have had a double object from the beginning. 
A double object in this matter means duplicity. At the extra session of 



CIVIL WAE. 319 

this Congress, on the 22d of July, 1861, they voted for one particular line 
of policy upon "which this war was to be conducted. They then seemed to 
have a single object ; but since that time they have perverted, or, if you 
please, doubled that object. This bill is of a piece with their whole poli- 
cy. I believe, Mr. Speaker, what I think is now the general sentiment 
of the people, that that policy has a hidden object ; and this bill, as a part 
of it, is intended to make tliis Union utterly impossible. 

This is our justification for the extraordinary proceedings the other 
night, when we were determined to use all the means which the laws of 
this House gave, to prevent the passage of a law like this, which is aimed 
at the national life. The gentlemen from the border States here, gentle- 
men from Kentucky and Ohio — for thei'e are two sides to the border — 
understand very well the hidden meaning and certain effect of this bill. 
Every man along the border will tell you that the Union is placed in new 
peril if you pursue this policy of taking the slaves from their masters to 
arm them in this civil strife. It will only keep alive and aggravate the 
alienation of sections, which had its beginning in hate, and will have its 
end in vengeance. I stated as my reason for the part I took in the pro- 
ceedings of our eighteen hours' session, that this bill was a part of the 
plot to drive the border slave States out of the Union, or to place them in 
such hostility to the Government as to hurl our armies at their throats 
and strangle their political life. I have been confirmed in my belief by 
the statements of the eloquent members from Kentucky, as well as by 
the course of discussion on the other side. 

There is no analogy, as I was proceeding to show, between the use 
of negi'O soldiers in the Revolution and their use at the present time. 
Why? Because in the Revolution negroes wei'e used — when used at all, 
and that very rarely — on the side of their loyal masters, and with their 
full consent. They stood by their side to defend colonial independence, not 
to strike for their own freedom. They were not then sought to be reduced 
to fiends, to bring about San Domingo insurrections. They were used to 
defend our own policy, our own Government. No social system was then 
sought to be uptorn. No labor system was then to be destroyed. When 
such objects were hinted, pi'ompt protest was entered against them. This 
matter Avas brought before the Continental Congress in October, 1774, in 
a formal suggestion of " the propriety that, while we are attempting to 
free ourselves from our present embarrassments and preserve ourselves 
from slavery, we also ought to take into consideration the state of cir- 
cumstances of the negro slaves in this Province." A motion was made 
in the Congress for a committee to take the subject into consideration. 
Tliis produced some debate. When the question was put, "Whether the 
matter should noAV subside ? " it passed. The matter subsided. In May, 
1775, there was a committee of safety, upon which were Hancock, War- 
ren, and others, who considered this matter, and with the purest patriot- 
ism embodied their judgment in the following resolution : 

" That it is the opinion of the committee, as the contest now between Great Britain 
and the Colonies respects the liberties and privileges of the latter, which the Colonics are 
determined to maintain, that the admission of any persons as soldiers mto the army, only 
such as are freemen, is inconsistent with the principles to be supported, and would reflect 
dishonor on this Colony ; and that no slaves be admitted into the army on any considera- 
tion whatever." 



320 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

Has Massachusetts progressed or degenerated since that significant 
resolve ? This resolution was communicated to the Provincial Congress 
on the 6th of June, 1775. It was read and tabled, because the Provincial 
Congress would not even consider the proposition for organizing and arm- 
ing a servile race in the war of Independence. 

But the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McPhekson] quotes the 
great name of Washington to sustain this bill of abomination. Let us 
consult the truth of history. Washington took command of the army on 
the 3d of January, 1775 ; and in regular instructions to the recruiting 
officers in Massachusetts, issued from his headquarters at Cambridge, on 
the 10th of July, he prohibited the enrolment of any "negro" in the 
army. The same action was takeu in subsequent periods of the Revolu- 
tionary history. At a council of war, held at Washington's headquarters 
on the 8th of October, 1775, whei*e Washington was present, with Gen 
erals Lee, Putnam, Heath, Gates, Greene, and others, the question was 
proposed, " whether it was advisable to enlist any negroes in the new 
army ; and if so, whether there should be any distinction between such as 
are slaves and those who are free." ItAvas agreed unanimously to reject 
all slaves, and, by a great majority, to reject negroes altogether. Will 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania bring any authority to show that Wash- 
ington ever reconsidered that determination ? I know that afterwards ou 
one occasion, in the case of certain negroes, who had been in the army, 
and had served in some situations, and served faithfully by the side of 
their friends and masters, and Avhose reenlistment was urgently desired, 
he did make an exception ; but his general and fixed policy, as well as 
that of the Congress, was against the use of negroes in the military ser- 
vice. Gentlemen have been led into their historical mistakes on this sub- 
ject by finding such exceptional cases, and exaggerating them in the fog 
of their own fancies. So, in the present war, black soldiers have been 
used in Louisiana, it is said, by Governor Moore, on the rebel side ; and 
there may have been a few employed on the Chickahominy, who may 
have shot some of our soldiers there. And gentlemen have rashly inferred 
from this that there is a general system of organizing negroes for soldiers 
in the Confederate army. 

Mr. McPherson. I ask the gentleman from Ohio whether he can 
speak as to the correctness or falsity of the statement which I see in the 
newspapers, that it has been decided by the war department at Eichmond, 
that any person in the rebel States having any white blood in his veins 
is looked upon as liable to conscription, thus revoking the rule of law and 
practice, with the evident purpose of drawing mulattoes of every hue into 
the military service? 

Mr. Cox. If that is the case, they have, since this Avar began, re- 
versed entirely the status of the African descendants. I have no knowl- 
edge of any such decision as that referred to by the gentleman. Certainly 
[ would not predicate legislation here on any such decision, even if it was 
more than rumor. 

Mr. WiCKLiFFE. Will the gentleman from Ohio allow me to state a 
fact? When the army under General Bragg left the town Avhere I live, 
at the approach of Buell, last September, some sick officers were left be- 
hind. I conversed with them, because I had heard it stated that the rebels 



CIVIL WAE. 321 

•were employing the slaves in the army, and I was assured by them — and 
they Avere "^entlcmcn althougli they were rebels — that the statement Avas 
untrue, that there was not a single negro employed as a soldier in their 
army, though there were negroes in it employed as servants and waiters. 
I state this on their authority, and I believe they told tlie truth. 

Mr. Cox. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McPiierson] 
docs not give any authority for his statement, except that he has seen it 
in the newspapers. 

Mr. McPhekson". I do not assert that fact, but there are other facts 
which I may assert in the discussion. I do not know what the authority 
is for that statement. 

Mr. Cox. I do not generally act myself on these unofficial assertions. 
When an order to that effisct is issued from the Confederate Government, 
it will be time enough to consider what our action shall be, by way of re- 
tahatiou. But, Mr. Speaker, there is this difficulty in beginning this 
system of negro enlistment. It has, no doubt, occurred to many gentle- 
men on the other side of the Chamber. It is this : if we employ negroes 
as soldiers, and they are not employed on the rebel side, our negro sol- 
diers, if captured by the enemy, will be turned over to the States South 
for punishment, not according to the military code, but according to the 
laws of those States. Thus we would place the negroes in great peril per- 
haps of life, without having any means on our part adequately to redress 
their wrongs. Moreover, the Confederate States, if they have not begun 
this business of enlisting colored men, will not treat our black soldiers as 
the equals of their white soldiers or of our white soldiers ; and the result 
will be, as many negroes at the North are shrewd enough to foresee, that 
they will, if captured, receive none of the advantages of the laws of war, 
but all the terrible consequences of being outlawed from the international 
code, slavery, imprisonment, and perhaps death. And how, sir, can we 
retaliate for any such injuries or outrages? As the gentleman from 
Kansas argued the other day, and as Vattel argued before him, a rebel- 
lion, when formidable, demands, in the name of humanity, the observance 
of the laws of civilized warfare, the laws of moderation and honor. There 
is a distinct society, organized de foxto^ in the South ; and the laws of 
war obtain the same as between two nations with regard to prisoners of 
war. These men in the South have gi'eat power, and although it may have 
been obtained wrongfully and outrageously, we must legislate on the facts 
as they exist. We must not shut our eyes to the fact that tliey are a 
power so formidable that we cannot, as an act of humanity to our soldiers, 
refuse to observe the laws of war, not as we would interpret them, but as 
they also may interpret them. No genuine friend of the negro would try 
to persuade him to take the position of a soldier in our army, knowing 
how^ the Confederate Government has determined to treat negro soldiers. 
The men who would try to dragoon him into that position are not his 
friends. The poor negro, if he survive this conflict, will bitterly curse 
the very men v.'ho seem most to champion him, but whose championship 
has in it more of political consideration than of generous feeling. 

Mr. Edwards. I understand the gentleman that if these black sol- 
diers in our army should be 'captured by the enemy and be handed over to 
the ciyil authorities to be treated as felons, and their lives taken, or any 
21 



322 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGRESS. 

Other consequence visited upon them not known to the rules of civilized : 
warfare, that the United States Government ^arould have no remedy. 

Mr. Cox. What is your remedy ? 

Mr. Edwards. Retaliation. 

Mr. Cox. Retaliation — that is a rule which wiU soon turn this into : 
a barbarous Avar. It has no limit — no law. It has but one end — bloody j 
extermination. 

Mr. Edwards. I would hang or shoot one of their soldiers every ( 
time they hung or shot one of ours. 

Mr. Cox. But suppose that they took the black soldiers they cap- 
tured and made slaves of them ; what would the gentleman do then ? Do 
you not remember what President Lincoln said to those Chicago preachers i 
who called upon him to issue his proclamation ? Do you remember what 
he said in reference to the free negroes captured by the rebels at Harper's 
Ferry? He said, " What can I do? Mr. Greeley complains that I do not 
do something to reclaim them, or revenge them. But ivhat can I do?** 
I ask the gentleman Avhat could he have done? What has the President 
done to bring back those free negroes captured at Harper's Ferry by the . 
rebels ? Would you have him retaliate upon white rebels because they i 
abuse the captured negroes? You will answer. Yes. Then what? Re- 
taliation again from them upon our white soldiers, and so on, until the \ 
war becomes unbearable to the Christian world, and an outrage upon all 
civilized codes. 

Mr. Edwards. I answer the gentleman that, under the laws of war, 
this Government is authorized to treat those whom we capture in battle 
as those captured from us are treated by the enemy. I ask the gentle- 
man from Ohio, now, whether if Jefferson Davis should carry out his 
threats against those lie has captured from us, and subject to ignominy) 
our white officers, it would not be the duty of this Government to visit ; 
the same penalties upon the rebel officers whom we have captured from . 
them ? 

Mr. Cox. I know of no other way now by which properly to defend 
our officers who are captured. Such outrages Avill correct themselves. 
But would the gentleman pursue a policy which would aggravate the war,, 
by causing our white men to be punished in retuna for the punishment of 
rebel white soldiers, who might be punished in retaliation ibr the punish- 
ment of our negro soldiers who may be captured ? I will remind the i 
gentleman that there are a great many difficulties in the way of carrying; 
out his theory. This is a formidable rebellion, so formidable as to be- 
able to interpret practically the law of nations. Whether right or not, 
the rebel rulers hold that the use of slaves by us is an outrage upon the 
laws of civilized warfare. If they act on that doctrine, again I ask, withi 
the Executive, what are we to do about it? This Government once un- 
dertook to punish certain men as pirates. They were put in prison, tried,! 
convicted, and, I believe, sentenced to death. But we were advised that 
the South would retaliate ; and they did. They placed some of our best, 
officers in prisons, and held them as felons. What did our Governmenti 
do? Did it hang the pirates? Why not? It backed squarely out of its 
position. . » 



CIVTL WAK. 323 

j Mr. Kellet. If the gentleman will permit me, I want to say that 
not one of these men was sentenced. 

Mr. Cox. Why were they not sentenced ? 

, Mr. Kelley. There was no final judgment against any of them ; 

' there were motions for new trials pending in all the cases at the time this 

I arrangement was made. 

I Mr. Cox. Ah ! What arrangement was made by which these men 

f were not hung? 

j Mr. Kellet. That I cannot tell. 

f Mr. Cox. They were exchanged as prisoners of war. The Govern- 

: ment could not help it. I do not complain of the Government for that. 

! It was an inexorable necessity. A President that cannot go fifty miles 

I south of his capital is limited cle facto as to his power, though dc jure his 

f autliority may run to the Gulf. This is, I repeat, a formidable rebellion. 

\ It intei'poses formidable obstacles in the way of your plans for making 
black soldiers, which it will be well to heed. You must cease underrating 

'• this rebellion. You must take into consideration the fact that this South- 

' em Confederacy has a power of checking and retaliating ; otherwise you 
will £0 imperil our white soldiers, to say nothing of the blacks, that the 

' army will lack in recruits and lose its efficiency. 

I did not intend to refer to any thing except the historical question 

' connected with the use of negroes in the revolutionary war. I could 
bring proof after proof that, as a system of policy, the negroes were ruled 

' out of our revolutionary struggle. On the 18th of October, 1775, a com- 

■ mittee of conference, consisting of Dr. Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, and 
Thomas Lynch, with the deputy Governors of Connecticiit and Rhode 
Island, and the committee of the Council of Massachusetts Bay, met at 
Cambridge to confer with General Washington. Their object was to re- 
invigorate the army. On the 23d of October, says the historian (Histor- 
ical Notes, &c., by George H. Moore, librarian of the New York Histor- 
ical Society, p. 7), the negro question was presented and disposed of as 
follows : 

" Ought not negroes to be excluded from the new enlistment, especially such as aro 
slaves ? All were thought improper by the council officers. 
" Agreed that they be rejected altogether." 

Again, in general orders, November 12, 1775, Washington says : 

" Neither negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men unfit to endure tlio fatigues 
"of the campaign, are to be enlisted." 

One of my colleagues [Mr. Hutchins] yesterday quoted Colonel Lau- 
rens, of South Carolina, as an authority to show that negroes were used 
in the Revolution. Colonel Laurens was a zealous and enthusiastic friend 
of independence, and favored the use of the negro as the aid of his mas- 
ter in that struggle. His motive was good, noble, and patriotic. The 
English Generals Dunmore and Clinton had attempted to do what is now 
sought to be done, hud the negroes into the war as an element of diabolic 
insurrection. Profiers were made to slaves to run away and enlist in the 
English army. Thousands of slaves were lost. The Southern States 
were threatened by an army which would overrun and desolate it ; and in 
the emergency Congress consented that the project of enlisting the negroes 



32i EIGHT YEAES IN CONGKESS. 

should be submitted to South Carolina and Georgia, or the governing 
powers of those States. Was this the adoption of the system of negro 
6er%ice ? Not at all. Laurens went to South Carolina and urged his scheme. 
He had some strong men to indorse it, not for lighting the flames of ser- 
vile Avar or inflaming anew the raging elements of a civil Tvar growing 
out of the agitation of the servile relation, but to prevent these very re- 
sults, by organizing the slaves under and with their masters for the pro- 
tection of both from a foreign foe. What became of this project? The 
historian tells us that it encountered at once that strong, deep-seated feel- 
ing nurtured from earliest infancy among that people, which was ready 
to decide, with instinctive promptness, against " a measure of so threat- 
ening an aspect, and so offensive to that republican pride w^hieh disdains 
to commit the defence of the country to servile hands, or share with a 
color to which the idea of inferiority is iaseparably connected, the profes- 
sion of arms, and that appi'osimation of condition which must exist be- 
tween' the regular soldier and the militia man." This reasoning of the 
elder day is applicable now. Men are black yet and white yet, and time 
has not changed them. We cannot help the fact that the negro is 
black. We cannot reverse the established order of Providence and 
make him white. And if we cannot do that, we can never eradicate from 
the great body of the white people of America that prejudice against the 
Idack race which has been carried from private life into the public ser- 
vice, and which, if you run counter to it, will destroy the vigor and esprit 
of the army. Why, Mr. Speaker, perhaps one-third of our present army 
is made up of Irishmen. We know that a great part of the spirit of our 
army comes from the Celtic stock. Look at your Massachusetts regiments. 
I think that you will find in those regiments a majority of Irishmen. I 
tell you, sir, these Irishmen will not fight side by side Avith the negro. 
You might as well be warned of these things in time. You would listen 
to such Avarnings, if indeed you Avished the army to succeed, and the 
Union restored. 

I know that in the revolutionary times some States did allow negroes 
to enlist. New Hampsliire allowed them. New Jersey disallowed the 
practice, true as ever to the most sensible vicAvs of public duty. New 
York did allow it at one time, but I think discouraged it as demoralizing 
and degrading. We have a report of a regiment raised in Massachusetts 
and quartered in New York, in which there Avere a fcAV negroes. Of the 
effect of their mihtary companionship upon the whites, it is said : 

" Even in this regiment there were a number of negroes, which, to persons unaccus- 
tomed to such associations, h,id a disagreeable, degrading eli'ect." 

I do not imderstand the ai'guments made on the other side of the House 
in favor of this measure. Some gentlemen propose not to mix black and 
white in the same company or regiment. Why? Give me a reason for 
it, and I Avill give you the reason Avhy they should not be mixed in the 
same army. Gentlemen should not be so sensitive, who are AvUling that 
negi'oes should go into the same array. 

Mr. Speaker, the reason why this side of the House has fought this 
question so pertinaciously is the one Avhicli I gave when I asked to be ex- 
cused from voting, that it Avas a part of a plot to drive the boi'der States 



CIVIL WAK. 325 

out of the Union. Gentlemen know very well, if they know any thing of 
the people of tlie border States north and south of the Ohio as represented 
in or out of the army, that they will never consent to the formation of 
this force of black janizaries for any purpose. They will but incite the 
people to mobs and mutiny. The people are not yet so degraded as to 
desire to save their Government. by the aid of black brigades ; nor do I 
believe the projectors of this measure expect to save the Government by 
such means. But if they had racked their brains for a contrivance of 
mischief to prevent a hearty cooperation by the border States with our 
cause, they could not find a more mischievously diabolical plan than this 
bill. There are momentous consequences dependent on this sort of legis- 
lation. I beg the House to pause before they adopt it. This bill pro- 
posed at first to raise a negi'o army of one hundred and fifty thousand. I 
believe that the substitute of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Stevens] is not limited to any number. The law as now existing gives 
the President the fullest discretion to " employ" negroes in the service. 
He may use these black brigades wherever and however he pleases. Do 
you believe that such a scheme will ever be started or pursued with suc- 
cess ? Will the people, sir, allow it to go on ? Gentlemen forget that the 
people exist, and have spoken. This legislation is in total disregard and 
contempt of their voice. They have spoken for the Democracy. They 
have a right thus to speak ; a right which the gentleman from Illinois 
[Mr. Lovejoy] undertook to exercise on behalf of the honest masses and 
against the dishonest leaders of the Democracy ! He to speak for the 
Democratic people ! In his speech of yesterday he more than intimated 
that the Democracy were sympathizers with secession. He was called to 
an account by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Dunn], who said that 
Buch remarks would have a bad etFeet in the country. 

Mr. WiCKLiFFE. And in the army. 

Mr. Cox. I quote the reprimand of the gentleman from Indiana 
[Mr. Dunn], for this slander upon the Democracy : 

" I have no especial regard for that institution, but I am afraid that such general, 
Bweeping denunciations of the Democratic party as the gentleman has indulged in may 
have a bad effect. I, at least, have full faith in the loyalty of the great masses of the 
people of the loyal States, no matter to what party they may belong." 

What did he mean by that? Why would the slander of the Jacobin 
from Illinois produce a bad effect in the country ? Was it because it was 
untrue ? Was it because it was unwise ? What was the object of that 
particular reprimand? I Avill tell you. The gentleman fx-om Indiana 
knows that the great body of this army that answered the call of the 
President, and entered into a war to be carried on in pui'suance of the 
resolution of the extra session of Congress, offered by the gentleman from 
Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden], went out to fight the battle of the Union 
and the Constitution, and when that object was accomplished, they be- 
lieved the war should stop. They never Avent into a crusade of abolition ; 
and when denoimced as secessionists, because not abolitionists, the " bad 
effect of such sweeping denunciations " might appear in both army and 
people. After this overhauling of the Illinois member by the member 
from Indiana, the former changed his denunciations from the Democracy 



326 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGKESS. 

to its leaders, here and elsewhere. The denunciation gained nothing in 
truth or decency by the change. Here is what he said : 

" I did not refer to the honest masses of the Democratic party. If they had seen the 
cloven foot manifested by the Democratic leaders in this House, and in different portions 
of the country, they would never have given them a seat here. Governor Seymour would 
not have been elected Governor of New York. .The people know them now. We knew 
that the leaders were in sjinpathy with the secessionists, but it did not manifest itself. 
The emancipation policy of the President brought it out. Last year the gentleman from 
Kentucky eulogized the President. He almost put him on a niche by the side of Wash- 
ington. We have not heard one word of eulogy of the President from that gentleman 
at this session." 

The member from Illinois thought that the President's emancipation 
proclamation was like Ithuriel's spear, that it had developed the seces- 
sion sympathies of the Democratic party, or of its representatives here. 
I wanted to remind the gentleman at the time, that the '* diamond-pointed 
proclamation " Avas issued thirty days before the election ; and that us soon 
as it appeared, the people took the alarm, and they gave an unrivalled ma- 
jority to the Democrats over their opponents. The other side of the 
Chamber Avas defeated by that unwise, iU-timed, and seditious proclama- 
tion. 

Tlie gentleman from Illinois said the other day, that he thought there 
wouy be a reversal of the late elections, and that he looked forward with 
pleasure to that result. Some time ago he said that we could not beat 
them again. Perhaps not, and for a good reason ; for his remark reminds 
me of the dog which had his tail cut off, and then turned around to the 
man and said, " You cannot do that again." [Great laughter.] Why, 
sir, the late elections took from that side of the House from twenty to 
thii'ty members, and added them to the Democratic side. 

The gentleman said something about the secession sympathy of the 
Governor of New York ; that he did not represent the loyal element of 
that State. If the Governor elected by the people does not represent the 
loyal element, who does? If the gentlemen reelected to this House do 
not represent the loyal sentiment, who does ? I would like to know 
whether my colleagues from Ohio on the other side represent the loyal 
sentiment of Ohio ? If they do, that loyal sentiment is in a minority ; 
and that is not an unpleasant message to send out to Jefferson Davis. This 
vituperation is a slander upon the majority of the people of the North. 
We on this side are the representatives of the people. We have no sym- 
pathy with secession ; neither have the people of the North ; none. We 
have in our own way sustained this Government. I have voted all the 
men and money last session and this session to carry on this war. But, 
notwithstanding all this, we are, forsooth, to be stigmatized by the gentle- 
man from Illinois as secession sympathizers ! A few days ago, in the 
same strain of vituperation, he took me to task, too, for a speech on Puri- 
tanism, Avhich I made in New York city. For lack of something better, 
he referred to my small size. My only response to this coarse and irrele- 
vant mode of debate, is this epitaph for the gentleman, which I once met 
witli, and which, slightly changed, would answer all that he can say of 
the Democracy during his life, and suit his case very appropriately after 
death : 



CIVIL WAE. 327 

" Beneath this stone 0^^'EN Lotejoy lies, 
Little in every thing — except in size ; [Laughter.] 
What though his burly body fills this hole, 
Yet through hell's keyhole crept his little soul." [Great laughter.] 



PERSONAL LIBERTY. 

MILITAET ORDERS AGAINST FKEE SrEECn QUESTION IN MR. VALLANDIGHAM'S CASE. 

A FEW days after the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham, at the annual May 
Convention of the Democracy of Licking County, Ohio, Mr. Cox spoke 
as follows : — Citizens of Licking : In tlie last Congress you were my 
constituents. It is proper that I should answer your call to address you ; 
for you should know eveiy reason for every vote I gave as your Repre- 
sentative. I shall not be deterred from this duty to you by any fear from 
any quarter ; nor shall recent events and daily threats provoke me to 
utter sentiments less patriotic or more immoderate than I have been wont 
to utter. Come threats, come imprisonment, come torture, or come death 
itself, my lips shall not be locked. I shall do this to-day, not in the spirit 
of bravado, not for any sickly desire for martyrdom ; but because I re- 
spect tlie law, as the supreme authority and rule of my conduct. If I speak 
in this spirit, I may bring the policy of the Administration into disrepute, 
but I shall magnify the Government thereby. 

General Hascall, in his order No. 38, has interdicted all such speaking 
as will make the Administration disreputable ; and he has said that Gen- 
eral Burnside has approved of that order. I hope this is not true. Gen- 
eral Burnside could not have approved of that order, and then have told 
Judge Leavitt in his return to the habeas corpns in Vallandigham's case, 
that " if the people do not approve the policy of the Administration, they 
can change the constitutional authorities of the Government at the pi'oper 
time and in the proper method." What time and method? At and by the 
elections provided by law. To this we all agree. No going to jail for say- 
ing that. Nor is General Burnside so absurd as to accord to us the pi'iv- 
ilege of election, without the means to make up our minds as to the policy 
of men to be voted for ; for he goes on to say : " Let them freely discuss 
the policy in a proper tone." Very good, I agree to that. No bonds for 
me yet. If therefore by a " proper tone " I should bring the Administra- 
tion into disi'epute. General Burnside will not send me to prison. Indeed, 
I do not think an improper tone can ever bring any one into disrepute ex- 
cept him who uses it. But General Burnside woidd stop what he calls 
" license and intemperate discussion." Had such discussion been prohib- 
ited years ago, this war would not be on us now. As to the propriety of 
stopping that sort of discussion hy military arrests, even if they were legal, 
I dissent ; but as to the bad taste and policy of such discussion I should 
agree. No " offence " in saying that, I trust. Tlie same thing has been 
said in various ways since men wrote with the stylus, or Cadmus made 
the alphabet. Indeed, he weakens his cause, who lases an intemperate 
or licentious tone. Is he therefore to be suppressed? Plis statements 
may be falsehoods, his logic fallacies, his principles abhorrent, and his 



328 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

motives base ; all these do not furnisli a reason why he should be pro- 
hibited from uttcrincc his views. Why, even the New York "Tribune" 
has said that "our Federal and State Constitutions do not recognize per- 
verse opinions, nor unpatriotic speeches, as grounds of infliction." We 
must, to be faithful citizens, take the dross with the gold, in the current 
discussions of the day. Better let the little speck of license remain upon 
the eye, than put out the orbs of public intelligence, and live in sightless 
and despotic gloom. The people of this land cannot change their natui'e 
nor their education. Much as they may deprecate bad sentiments, they 
prefer to see them flash like powder innocuously above ground, than, pent 
up, explode with fearful ruin and combustion. How can the laggard 
authorities be urged to duty and tyrannical officials be lashed into dis- 
cretion, especially in time of war, when power tends to play fantastic 
tricks and aggj-andize its importance and function, except by bold discvis- 
sion? In the Cabinet, in the public Assemblage, in the Court, in the 
Legislature, among all parties, everywhere. Reason should be allowed a 
free combat with Eri'or. If Error strikes foul, the public will know how 
to award the prize. It is in the spirit I have indicated, of decorous and 
discreet moderation, that I propose to discuss the question, uppermost in 
your mind, connected with the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham. It is unne- 
cessary for me to denounce his arrest as illegal. I come not to stimulate 
passion. I ask you to practise the courage of endurance, to the end that 
we may more speedily have a remedy'. No amount of temporary restraint 
will prevent popular action. As a matter of philosophy, and not as a de- 
fiance, I state what you know, that Democratic thought is irrepressibly 
outspoken ; and that for every Democrat restrained, a hundred will leap 
to his place and court the honors of persecution. 

The question involved in Mr. Vallandigham's arrest does not concern 
him alone. If it is a breach of law, it involves the fate of each and 
all. His arrest is a breach of the Constitution, State and Federal, which 
provides for the! security of the people " in their persons, houses, papers, 
and effects ; " which forbids that any one should be held to answer for any 
crime except by indictment ; which protects life, liberty, and property by 
the processes of law ; and which declares for free speech without abridg- 
ment. This view is conclusive, but the state of civil war enlarges the 
discussion. 

The question in that view is : Can a citizen, not connected with the 
army of the United States, remote from the scene of its operations, and in 
Ohio, where all the laws of the land are yet enforced by constitutional 
means, be subjected to military arrest, imprisonment, and trial before 
a military commission and punishment at its discretion, either for offences 
unknown to the law, or, if kno^vn, for which the law has provided a mode 
of trial and penalty? In other words : In this time of great peril, has the 
Federal legislature, after two years of war, failed to provide for all its 
emergencies? and, if it has failed, can the Executive act instantly and 
beyond the limits of the law, at his discretion? In pursuing these ques- 
tions, I hold : 

1. That Congress has provided for the offence alleged against Mr. 
Vallandigham. In the specifications he is charged Avitli various expres- 
sions, " all of which opinions and sentiments he well knew did aid, com- 



CIVIL WAE. 329 

fort, and encourage those in arms against the Government, and could but 
induce in his hearers a distrust of their OAvn Governmeoi, sympathy for 
those in arms against it, and a disposition to resist the laws of the land." 

In the laws passed by the last Congress, such an oftencc is made pun- 
ishable. By an act approved July 17, 1862, to " suppress insurrection," 
etc. {U. S. Statutes, p. 589), known as the confiscation act, it is pro- 
vided (sec. 2) that if any person " shall give aid or comfort to the re- 
bellion or insurrection and be convicted thereof, such person shall be pun- 
ished " by fine and imprisonment and disqualification for office. In the 
14th section, the Courts of the United States are given *•' full power " to 
institute all proceedings under the law. 

This would be sufficient as to the crime as alleged and the tribunal to 
try it ; but Congi-ess did not stop there. By an act approved March 3, 
1863, known as the act relating to the habeas corpus ( U. S. Statutes, p. 
755, etc.), from which I now read, the President is authorized to suspend 
the writ of habeas corpus, " in any case throughout the United States, or 
any part of it." Whenever and wherever the writ is suspended, no mil- 
itary or other ofiicer is bound to answer the writ by the production of the 
body ; but the judge shall, on notice that the prisoner is held under the 
President's order, suspend all proceedings under the habeas corpus. By 
the same law the Departments of State and of War are to furnish to the 
judges of the districts the names of political prisoners who were arrested 
therein, for civil trial. If the accused are not indicted, the judge is to 
order a discharge, and the custodian is to execute the order. In case the 
Departments fail to send such a list to the judges, any citizen may do it 
and obtain the discharge of the prisoner. 

These laws are in force. They were made by a Republican Congress. 
They were made for this very exigency. This civU war was in contem- 
plation when they were passed. It was intended by these laws to prevent 
arbitrary arrests and inquisitorial tribunals of military men. It was in- 
tended by them to guarantee an accusatorial trial, openly, with indict- 
ment, by a jury selected impartially, and Avho should I'Gturn an absolute 
verdict. It will be remembered that two days after the Emancipation 
proclamation, to wit, September 24, 1863, the President issued another 
proclamation subjecting all persons " to trial by courts-martial and mil- 
itary commissions " who were found " affording aid and comfort to the 
rebels." The same proclamation suspended the habeas corpus for all such 
persons. If, then, you would understand the law of March 3, 1863, re- 
member it was intended expressly to ignore the right of the President to 
issue that proclamation, without authority from Congress. The first sec- 
tion substantially disallows the right of the Pi-esident to suspend the Avrit, 
without the assent of Congress thereto. The other section quoted provides 
civil trial for those arrested. Would you know the motive which prompted 
the law of March? Read the debates of the last session. The arbitrary 
arrests of the last summer were condemned at the last fall elections. la 
Vermont, in Massachusetts, in New York, in New Jersey, in Iowa, in 
Ohio — everywhere, far and aloof from military precincts, such arrests 
were made. The names of the victims are familiar. The election oper- 
ated, as the miracle of old did, to open the prison doors. When, on the 
first day of the last session, I offered a resolution denouncing these arrests, 



330 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

and calling on the President to stop tlicm, it was voted down by the Re- 
publicans ; yet many of their best men refused to sanction such proceed- 
ings. Cowan, Browning, Kellogg, and others, felt the necessity of pro- 
vidin"- for the relief of all civilians from military ai'rest and trial. They 
digested this plan of turning them over to the civil authorities for indict- 
ment, trial, and punishment, or discharge. Thus was secured, by the last 
Republican Congress, that penal trial upon which Montesquieu thought 
" that chiefly the liberty of the citizen depended." Thus was secured that 
" key-stone of a nation's public law " — a fair penal trial, without which 
liberty is but a sounding name. 

In Ohio there had been no suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. 
It was, therefore, the duty of Judge Leavitt to see to it that Mr. Vallan- 
dingham had the benefit of the Avrit. The implication of the law I have 
quoted, required the Judge to issue it. I say nothing of the constiiutional 
right of every one imprisoned, as of course^ to have the writ. What busi- 
ness was it of his whether General Burnside woidd or would not execute 
it? He must have known the history of this writ of freedom — of this 
glorious result of the long struggle between law and powder. He must have 
learned that ths law had triumphed in the struggle, and that however it 
might be in France, where an iron rod was the staff of justice, in America - 
and England, at common law, individual liberty and public justice were 
not empty words to make " earth sick and heaven weary," but practical 
realities, made so by the independence of the judiciary and the majesty of 
law. 

So long as the writ had not been suspended in Ohio, nor martial law 
declared, the Judge had no right to refuse it, even to the meanest criminal. 
Had he allowed it, how do we know but that Gen. Burnside would have 
taken counsel of the Attorney-General, Mr. Bates, who. as an honest ofB- 
cer, would have advised that Gen. Burnside should either have returned 
the body, or have complied with the law of March 3, 1863, and have at 
once notified the Judge that he could not return the body, by reason of 
the suspension of habeas corpus in Ohio ; or, perhaps, the Secretary of 
War might have handed in the name. of Mr. Vallandigham to the Judge 
for " due process of law," by indictment and trial in obedience to the law 
of March 3, 1863. By the failure or neglect of Mr. Stanton to com- 
ply with his part of the law of March 3. 1863, it is now impossible to 
comply with its provisions, since Mr. Vallandigham is removed, by the 
act of our military, outside of its lines. If Mr. Vallandigham's name 
were placed upon the list sent to Judge Leavitt, it is now too late to afford 
him the civil trial provided by the Republican Congress. As your repre- 
sentative during the Congress which enacted the laws referred to, I de- 
clare to you that the avowed object of that legislation was to save the 
nation from any more of the disgraceful scenes of the last summer, when 
citizens were seized without warrant, imprisoned without law, and dis- 
missed without hearing. 

In uttering your protest against this infraction of law, fellow citizens, 
you give the best assurances of your fidelity to the Government. If the 
present Administration desire to provoke no hostility to the laws ; if they 
would cuUivate the respect of the opposition ; if they would that the peo- 
ple, North and South, should look to them as the honored ministers of 



CIVIL WAE. 331 

justice, let them heed the appeals of their own wiser men and journals, 
and stop instantly this system of unexampled terrorism, which is slowly 
-but surely producing disintetjration, distrust, and anarchy in society. 

2. But if Vallandigham's case is not included in those provided against 
by the laws I have quoted, then it is no offence at all, unless it be treason. 
We know that treason cannot be tried except in pursuance of certain fixed 
constitutional rules, and tliat these rules have not been pursued in this 
case. Where, then, does the chief Executive or his agents get this power 
of arrest ? It is said by its advocates to be an implied power, belonging 
to the Commander-in-Chief of the army. In this capacity, it is said that 
he can, in subduing the enemy, use any power in his opinion necessary to 
that end. If so, then he has no limit but his own will. Such power is 
purely despotic. True, he has all the power, and no other, of the Gene- 
ral-in-Chief of the army, but it is confined to the sphere of actual opera- 
tions, and all such power is derived from and must be subordinate to the 
law which creates it. To command the army as its first chief, is not to 
have supreme control over all citizens, for that belongs to legislation, and 
the Executive cannot legislate. He cannot erect tribunals. He cannot 
create offences. He cannot arrest arbitrarily citizens Avho are not sol- 
diers. Is martial law pleaded ? Why, this has not yet been declared over 
the whole country. Nor does it apply where there is no army or rebellion. 
It was not applied to Ohio at all, nor to Dayton till after the arrest. 
Judge Curtis thus refers to this extraordinary power, asserted for the Com- 
mander-in-Chief : 

" But when the mUitary commander controls the person or property cf citizens, who 
are beyond the sphere of his actual operations in the field, when he makes laws to gov- 
ern their conduct, he becomes a legislator. Those laws may be made actually operative ; 
obedience to them may be enforced by military power ; their purposes may be solely to 
support and recruit his armies, or to weaken the power of the enemy with whom he is 
contending. £ut he is legislator still ; and whether his edicts are clothed in the form of 
proclamations, of military orders, by whatever name they may be called, they are laws. 
If he have the legislative power conferred on him by the people, it is well. If not, he 
usurps it. 

" He has no more lawful authority to hold all the citizens of the entire country, out- 
side of the sphere of his actual operations in the field, amenable to his military edicts, 
than he has to hold all the jproperty of the country subject to his military requisitions. 
He is not the mihtary commander of the citlzeiis of the United States, but of its soldiers." 

If what Judge Curtis says be true, the power which has thus arrested 
one of our citizens, and created an offence, or a strange tribunal to try a 
real or alleged offence, is usurpation. If Judge Curtis be not mistaken, 
anji if the Republican Supreme Court of Wisconsin are not also mistaken 
in a similar judgment ; if the commentators and jurists of the land are 
not in error, then Governor Seymour has not overstated the case, when 
he says such conduct " wiU not only lead to military despotism, it estab- 
lishes military despotism." 

In Ohio the civil machinery of the State has not stopped. Every 
part of it was running without jar under the Constitution. The Courts 
were open, the process of the State unimpeded, not a single pulley, lever, 
joint, wheel, or cog out of place — all evolving out of harmony, order, 
peace, and security. Discussion Avas free ; printing unrestricted ; meet- 
ings public ; the ballot-box and all other elements of freedom were un- 
impaired ; when, lo ! a citizen is seized in his own house, in the night 



332 EIGHT TEAES LCT CONGRESS. 

time, and by military force taken before a military tribunal, and by a 
mode of seizure and duress unknown to the institutions of the State, to 
ansv/er for an offence, for the trial of which a law had abcady been 
passed, and a different tribunal already designated ! He is tried, and 
justice laughs at the mockery. He is sentenced to be thrust within the 
borders of a formidable rebellion, whose success he had everywhere dep- 
recated. AVhat can come of it ? "What does it forebode ? What does 
it mean ? Horace Greeley told the truth when he said that this banish- 
ment was the worst joke which Mr. Lincoln had yet perpetrated. Pre- 
cisely what Mr. Greeley means I cannot say ; but if Mr. Vallandigham 
declares boldly in the South, as he has in the North, against the inde- 
pendence of their section, and the infernal atrocity of their war against 
our Government, this exile will be a comedy of errors. If Mr. Vallan- 
digham should, through what he may conceive to be the injustice of the 
North, or the blandishments of the South, show the least sympathy with 
the rebellion and its objects, I shall be mistaken in his character. His 
Democratic friends will be the first to anathematize such recreancy. Time, 
to wdiich he has appealed, will solve the Avisdom or the unwisdom, the 
seriousness or jocoseness of this peculiar punishment. 

3. What crime was sought to be thus punished? Mr. Vallandigham's 
speech at Mount Vernon was the ostensible, but his sentiments as to the 
war, expressed for two years, was the |^eal offence. But would these 
come Avithin the law of July 17, 1862 ? If so, let him be tried legally for 
his peace principles under that law. In his Mount Vernon speech he 
did not indulge in any urgent appeals fo,r peace. He confined himself to 
denouncing the Administration for the\jnifractions of the Constitution. He 
urged compliance with law and obediience to legitimate authority. His 
speech there allayed excitement, and estopped all tendency to violence. 
It is on record, that on sbriie most material questions, my votes and 
speeches were not in accordfMce with Mr. Vallandigham's. I differed with 
him then, and yet differ, as you know, as to his peace policy ; but upon 
that occasion, I said very little that would not be obnoxious to the same 
punishment, if, indeed, his speech there were obnoxious. Yet my speech 
was reported as " harmless ; " his as " dangerous." I think I am right in 
assuming that Mr. Vallandigham's peace policy was the real reason of his 
arrest. This again enlarges the discussion. Had he a right to indulge 
in unwise and unpatriotic speeclies? Supposing that he is wrong and 
others right, still there remains an important question, something more 
momentous than the arrest of one man. It is the right of free speech. It 
is the right always exercised in time of war by some one in favor of 
peace ; a right indispensable to the attainment of the very object of war, 
which is peace. This right has been always used in time of war, as Avell 
in England as in America. To vindicate that right before you would be 
superfluous. As Avell reargue the principle of gravitation, the circulation 
of the blood, or the existence of light. The time was when John Milton 
wrote his scholarly defence of unlicensed priiiting, and proved the thesis 
of Euripides, fixed in immortal Greek at the head of his chapter, that 

" Tliis is true liberty, when freeborn men, 
Having to advise the public, may speak free." 



CIVIL WAE. 333 

Time was when his Puritan thunder echoed through the English land, and 
made the Parliaments listen to his plea for the liberty of discourse on 
all subjects, without tlie imjjrimatur of censor or the supervision of the 
provost. With what sterling sense he pleaded for that free spcecli, v.hich 
allowed the wise man to gather the gold from the drossiest volume, and 
which did not feac to add any more folly to the fool. "• The State," said 
he, " shall be m}^ governor, but not my critic ! " "What ho thot;ght then, 
at the dawn of English popular freedom, the courts of England afterwards 
applied to both religion and politics. On the 21th of July, 1797, Thomas 
Williams was tried before Lord Kenyon for printing Tom Painc's attack 
on Christianity. The great Lord Erskine defended him. While he rep- 
robated the object of the Infidel in his ^ Age of Reason," he vindicated, 
with an angelic eloquence which has made his speech the verdict of mil- 
lions, the most unbounded freedom of discussion, even to the challenging 
of error in the Constitution itself, and especially in its administration. 
Hear his noble sentiments : 

" Although every community must establish supreme authorities, founded upon fixed 
prmciples, and must give high powers to magistrates to administer laws for the preserva- 
tion of the Government itself, and for the security of those who are to be protected by it ; 
yet, as infallibility and perfection belong neither to human establishments nor to human 
individuals, it ought to be the policy of all free estabhshmeuts, as it is most peculiarly 
the principle of our own Constitution, to permit the most unbounded freedom of discus- 
sion, even by detecting errors in the Constitution or administration of the very Govern- 
ment itself, so as that decorum is observed, which every State must exact from its sub- 
jects, and which imposes no restraint upon any intellectual composition, f.iirly, houestly, 
and decently addressed to the consciences and understandings of men. Upon this prin- 
ciple I have an unquestionable i-ight — a right which the best subjects have exercised — to 
examine the principles and structure of the Constitution, and by fair, manly reasoning, 
to question the practice of its administratoi'S. I have a right to consider and to point out 
errors in the one or in the other ; and not merely to reason upon their existence, but to 
consider the means of their reformation. By such free, well-intentioned, modest, and 
dignified communication of sentiments and opinions, all nations have been gradually im- 
proved, and milder laws and purer religions have been established." 

Under such a large-minded philosophy, we could tolerate a Wendell 
Phillips, so long as there is left reason to combat his heresies of hate. 
But if we are only to have freedom of speech from the Phillipses and 
other ranters against our system of government, while those are throttled 
who to preserve that system would correct its administration, then indeed 
is Liberty manacled and Reason in irons. 

These old discussions I had thought would never have been revived, 
except to honor the heroism of the early martyrs who like Algernon Sid- 
ney died for freedom of thought, or to admire their graceful style of ex- 
pression through which the soul of heroism shone. We had already 
gemmed upon the forehead of our time the resplendent coronal of free 
thought and free printing and free speech. Tiiey were the crown jewels 
of popular sovereignty. They have not been shut up in caskets, like the 
jewels of princes, but set in our fundamental law — not for a life only, 
but for a nation's life, to shine with their " silent capabilities of light" lor 
an immortality ! 

With what a glorious fervor Daniel Webster vindicated this right ! 
His sentiment you have recognized by adopting it as one of your resolu- 
tions to-day. His comprehensive mind saw in free debate the scholar's 



334 EIGHT YEAKS EN CONGKESS. 

Stimulus, the philosopher's stone, the statesman's policy, the citizen's pro- 
tection, and the religionist's faith ! He saw in it the rod for error, the 
plummet of truth, aud the car of advancement. Especially did he find in 
its guarantee a nation's capacity and repose, a people's liberty and happi- 
ness. He saw that reason would lose her great office, the pen its pun- 
gency and power, aud eloquence its fervor and force, if freedom of 
thonglit and speech was circumscribed. 

What Webster saw and expressed Avith the glow of a great heart, 
Thomas Jefferson has handed down in his inaugural message, wherein he 
has impcarled forever the principles of Democratic liberty : a jealous care of 
the right of election ; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority ; 
the diffusion of information, and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar 
of public reason ; freedom of the press and freedom of person, under the 
protection of the habeas corphs and trial by juries impartially selected. 
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us 
and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The 
wisdom of our sages, the blood of our heroes, have been devoted to 
their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the 
text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of 
those we trust ; and should we wander from them in moments of eri-or 
and alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which 
leads to peace, liberty, and safety. 

I would to God that I could read to Mr. Lincoln, with such commen- 
tary as history furnishes, these principles of his philosophic and Demo- 
cratic predecessor, that he might retrace his steps with regard to these 
extraordinary arrests. I Avould implore him, with that respect due to 
his high office, and forgetting all considerations but the honor and safety 
of the people of Ohio whose representative in part I have been so long, to 
pause before he precipitates any part of our people into the despair which 
is fast gathering upon their hearts. I would beseech him, in the language 
of his proclamation for national humih'ation, in the name of that Gtod who 
overrules the designs of Presidents and the orders of Generals, not to add 
to the '■'• awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land," other 
and Avorse " punishments for our presumptuous sins." I would beseech 
him not to turn away from the earnest question which Horatio Seymour 
has propounded : '• Whether this war is Avaged to put down rebellion at 
the South or destroy free institutuons at the North ; " but to answer it 
magnanimously by retracing his steps, releasing and stopping at once and 
forever this system of arrest and inquisitorial trial. He Avould thus as- 
sure you Avhose sons and brothers are in the field, that our Government 
shall not be subverted in the North, Avhile our gallant soldiers are main- 
taining it Avith their lives in the South. 



civrL WAE. 336 

MAGNA CHARTA— ITS SANCTITY. 
Extract from a speech delivered in Cooper Institute, in November, 1863. 

The traveller who visits that island meadow in the river Thames, near 
Windsor, now used as a race course, and still known as Runnymede, does 
not go there to see the racing, but because that meadow marks an era in 
the progress of human freedom. There, six hundred and forty-four years 
ago, on the morning of the 12th of August, the iron-clad barons met King 
John, and wrested from him the same rights which have been violated by 
Abraham Lincoln, and ostracized by the indemnity bill of the last Con- 
gress. [Cheers.] These rights were written in the Latin of that day, 
" NuJlus liber homo capiatiir." Dead language, but vital with liberty — 
which Chatham said was worth all the classics. 

" No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or deprived of his ovra 
free household, or of his liberties, or of his own free customs, or out- 
lawed, or banished, or injured in any manner, nor Avill we pass sentence 
upon him, nor send trial upon him, unless by the legal judgment of his peers 
or by the law of the land." [Cheers.] 

This was the germ of our civil freedom, which the pigmies of to-day 
are endeavoring to uproot, now that it has grown from the acorn to the 
oak ! As another (Judge Thomas of Massachusetts) has so finely ex- 
pressed it : " From the gray of that morning streamed the rays, which, 
uplifting with the hours, coursing with the years, and keeping pace with 
the centuries, have encircled the whole earth with the glorious light of 
English liberty — the liberty for which our fathers planted these common- 
wealths in the wilderness ; for which they went through the baptism of 
blood and fire in the Revolution ; which they imbedded and hoped to 
make immortal in the Constitution ; without which the Constitution would 
not be worth the parchment on which it was written." [Cheers.] As if 
to make this great charter sacred forever in the Anglo-Saxon memory, 
to connect it with the holiest emotions of religion, and to sanction it 
by the hopes and the terrors of the unseen world, the Catholic hie- 
rarchy of that day — long before Protestantism arose, before the Refor- 
mation, before we had the transcendental light of our Puritan preach- 
ers [laughter] — this Catholic hierarchy, then the friend of the oppressed 
and the people, were convoked a few days after the unwilling king 
signed the charter. Picture to your eye that great convocation. It 
met in Westminster Abbey, the mausoleum of the dead royalty and genius 
of Britain. Here was the king upon his throne, sceptred and crowned, 
impurpled in his robes of office ; near him were the lords temporal in their 
scarlet gowns ; on his right were the gentlemen of England representing 
the Comiuons, the people of the realm ; and within the altar were the 
lords spiritual, clad in all the pomp of their pontifical apparel ! In the 
midst stood Stephen Langton, the primate of England, Arclibishop of 
Canterbury. The great organ rolls its music amidst the Gothic arches ; 
the air, suffused with a dim religious light from the stained windows, 
trembles with the thrill of " symphony divine," and the choir sing Te Deum 



336 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGEESS. 

laudamus — praise to God for the great charter of human freedom ! Cen- 
sers swing and the -incense rises, an offering to the God of justice ! And 
in that impressive presence the Archbishop arises, and gathering upon his 
brow and in his voice the terrors of the invisible and eternal world, he se- 
questers and excludes, and from the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, from 
the company of the saints in heaven and the good on earth, he forever 
excommunicates and accurses every one who should dare violate that 
great charter of Anglo-Saxon freedom ! [Cheers.] Think you, men of 
New York, these curses are not living yet? A Massachusetts Senator has 
said that your honored Governor is now being dragged at the chariot of a 
Federal Executive, usurping the rights of the people and violating the 
great charter, as eternized in our traditions, our history, and our Consti- 
tution. But the people of this country are meeting as of old, not in any 
Gothic minster, not in the presence of the great hierarchs, not with cere- 
mony of Churcli and State, not to the music of organ and choir or the 
rising incense of praise, not amidst the fulminations of primates ; but 
under the great sky of heaven, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi ;. and 
they, too, are sequestering and excluding, excommunicating and accurs- 
ing — and from the body of the just God in heaven and from the company 
of the good and patriotic everywhere- — all the minions of power who 
have dared in this age and land to violate these sacred rights of personal 
and constitutional liberty. [Great cheers.J . 



CONFISCATION. 

ITS HISTORY EXPEUIENCE OF IRELAND — CAN EELLIGEREKICY AND TREASON EXIST TOGETIIER ? 

PHILOLOGY PROGRESSIVE — COIn'STITUTIONAL PROVISIONS EFFECTS OF CONFISCATION. 

"It is advisable to exceed in lenity rather than in severity ; to banish but few rather than 
nQ»ny ; and to leave them their estates, instead of making a vast number of confiscations. 
Under pretence of avenging the republic's cause, the avengers would establish tyranny. 
The business is not to destroy the rebel, but the rebellion. They ought to return as quickly 
as possible into the usual track of government, in which every one is protected by the 
laws, and no one injured." — Montesquieu. 

The joint resolution explanatory of the Confiscation Act being before 
the House, on January 14, 1864, Mr. Cox said : — I do not desire to detain 
the House at any length. The general subject of confiscation, its legality 
and policy, was exhaustively discussed in th6 last Congress. I may be 
allowed to add a few considerations to those which have heretofore been 
offered here : first, as to the general policy of the confiscation system, with 
a view to putting down this rebellion ; and secondly, as to the specific 
mode pointed out by this bill and its proposed amendments. My impres- 
sion is, tliat the confiscation system has been an utter failure. Because 
it has failed, we are to have it newly tinkered session after session, and 
from day to day, witli a view to encourage rapacity and aggravate griev- 
ances. Such legislation, sir, only stimulates rebellion. It destroys what 
remnant of Union feeling may be still remaining in the South. It ignores 



CIVIL WAE. 33T 

the first lesson of history, what has been truly called " the principal obser- 
vation of the best historians, that a whole nation, how contemptible soever, 
should not be so incensed by any prince or State, how powerful soever, as 
to be driven to take desperate courses." Instead of disai'ming the rebel, 
it arms him, when nearly exhausted, with the weapons of revenge and 
despair. Mr. Burke once said, speaking of America : " You cannot frame 
an indictment against a whole people." History is, alas ! too full of ex- 
amples of the ruthless savagery of confiscation. In proportion to the 
atrocities have been the resistance of the people and the desolation of the 
lands to which such savagery has been applied. If I should wish to pre- 
sent a case where all the horrors of subjugation, penury, devastation, and 
confiscation have been felt, I would go to Ireland. Crushed by the cruelty 
of a system similar to that now and hei'e sought to be inaugurated, Ire- 
land points with skeleton finger continually in all her sad history a 
warning to our rulers. I do not think these cruelties of England toward 
Ireland are attributable solely to the Puritan spirit of the time of Crom- 
well, although I find in her history an appeal from New England, in the 
person of one of her pastors, to Old England, to make the " English sword 
drunk with Irish blood, to make them heaps upon heaps, their country a 
dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment to nations." These excesses 
were not the result of religious bigotry alone. They date from the ear- 
liest connection of Ireland with England. All her rebellions were the 
reaction of suffering against rapine. With permission, I extract from 
Smythe's Ireland, Plistorical and Statistical, volume eleven, page 117, the 
terrible lesson I have pondered on the general subject of confiscation. 
After the expulsion of James II. from the throne of England, the slender rel- 
ics of Irish possessions became the subject of fresh confiscations. From a 
report made in 1698, it appears that nearly 4,000 Irish subjects were out- 
lawed, and their possessions, amounting to 1,060,792 acres, were confis- 
cated. The area of Ireland is estimated at 11,042,682 acres. The his- 
torian says, that the forfeitures in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth were 
2,838,972 acres ; in the reign of James I., at the Restoration, and in 1688, 
the forfeitures were 11,697,629 acres ; so that the whole island has been 
confiscated, and some parts twice. In one century no inconsiderable por- 
tion of the island was confiscated twice, or perhaps thrice ; so that at the 
Union, the situation of Ireland was unparalleled in the history of the world. 
Such universal ruin only served then, as it will serve in this devoted land, 
to inspire hatred and scorn between the conquered people and the victors 
who trampled upon them. Retaliation and murder ever follow closely 
upon the heels of confiscation. There is not a wise writer who has pic- 
tured this history but has condemned the impolicy, not to say illegality, of 
the forfeitures. They operated always against the conclusion of the war. 
Had the Irish been regarded as alien enemies instead of domestic rebels, 
they would have had one relief^ — they would have retained their posses- 
sions under the established law of civilized nations. 

If I were to assume the premises sometimes assumed by gentlemen 
upon the other side of the House, that this war is a territorial war, and 
that every man, woman, and child, loyal or disloyal, within the limits of 
the belligerent territory are alien enemies, and should sufifer all the conse- 
quences of belligerency, according to the law of nations, then there would 
22 



338 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGEESS. 

be no foundation at all for acts of this kind.* If the rebel becomes an i 
alien enemy, you cannot confiscate the private property as these bills pro- 
pose. If there be a line of force, pi'otectcd by bayonets, which, accord- 
ing to the Supreme Court in the Hiawatha case, makes the confederacy a 
de facto government ; if this be true, as argued by the Solicitor of the War 
Department, and as has been argued by a gentleman in the other end of 
the Capitol, then there can be no confiscation of rebel property at all ia 
the manner prescribed by the confiscation. act. But I do not propose to 
inquire too curiously into this matter, though it may well engage the atten- 
tion of jurists to inquire how treason can be alleged or confiscation follow 
where the accused were under the dominion of a power capable of coercing 
allegiance to it and holding the sword of the magistrate de facto, though 
not de jure. Protection and allegiance are correlative. While govern- 
mient gives the one, it may command the other. If it fail to give protec- 
tion, would it be just or rational to punish for treason? This subject is 
treated in the books, and, indeed, was the subject of English statutes. It 
is thus stated by a writer in the New American Cyclopjedia, under the 
title Treason : 

" But, from the obvious absurdity of exacting from every individual a sound, or rather 
a fortunate, judgment as to the obscure and compHcated grounds on which the claim to 
sovereignty often rested, it became and still remains a well-settled rule, that no one incurs 
the guilt of treason by adherence to a king or government de facto, although that king 
or government has but the right of a successful rebel, and loses it all by a subsequent 
defeat." 



'* A succinct statement of this heresy is to be found in a letter of William Whiting, 
Esq., the Solicitor of the War Department, addressed to the " Union League of Philadel- 
phia," in exposition of the political situation created by the progress of the war. In this 
publication Mr. Whiting contends that the war between the Government and the insur- 
gents has at present reached such a stage that, alike in law and in fact, it has become a 
" territorial civil war," that is, as he adds, " a war by all persons situated in the belliger- 
ent teiritory against the United States." He says ; 

" Whenever two nations are at war, every subject of one belligerent nation is a public 
enemy of the other. An individual may be a personal friend and at the same time a pub- 
lic enemy to the United States. The law of war defines international relations. When 
the civil v^ar in America became a territorial war, every citizen residing in the belligerent 
districts became a pubhc enemy, irrespective of his private sentiments, whether loyal or 
disloyal, friendly or hostile. Unionist or Secessionist, guilty or innocent." 

According to this logic, therefore, every citizen and subject of the Southern Govern- 
ment, whether loyal or disloyal, friendly or hostile. Unionist or Secessionist, guilty or in- 
nocent, black or white, bond or free, is to be held and treated as a public enemy of the 
United States. 

The rights of persons inhabiting the seceded States are thus comprehensively defined : 

^^ Each person inhabiting those sections of the country declared by the President's 
proclamation to be in rebellion has the right to what belongs to a jmblic enemy, and no 
more. He can have no right to take any part in our Government. That right does not 
belong to an enemy of the country while he is waging war or after he has been subdued. 
A public enemy has a right to participate in or to assume the Government of the United 
States only when he has conquered the United States. We find in this well-settled doc- 
trine of belligerent law the solution of all questions in relation to State rights. After 
the inhabitants of a district have become public enemies, they have no rights, either State 
or personal, agaitist the United States. They are belligerents only, and have left to them 
only belligerent rights." 

If this be true— which, however, I deny — then those who urge it at least are estopped 
from t'.rging trials for treason, and confiscations as the penalty. There can be no treason 
in case of a belligerent who is in the position of a public enemy. 



CIVIL WAR. 339 

It seems to have been adopted by the dominant party in this House 
that this confiscation system shall, if possible, be carried out in the South. 
They cannot do it and make it effective under the Constitution. They 
must do it over that instrument and in spite of its limitations. All the 
forfeiture which they can obtain under the Constitution is simply the life 
estate of those who are convicted of treason ; and as that life estate is no 
longer than the halter with Avhich the man is hung, the results would not 
be worth the paias. Avarice would not be sated by a life estate. Its 
maw must be gorged. It must have all. Hence, from some motive or 
other not creditable to our human nature, whether it be from unchristian 
malice or corrupt greed, or some other diabolic desire, there seems to be 
an urgency upon gentlemen upon the other side of the House to break the 
Constitution to get at the absolute title to the estates of the rebels. 

I know it may be said by the gentleman from Iowa that the bill which 
he has presented does not involve the constitutional question. He tells us 
that he simply desires to submit the question to the Courts, and let them 
determine whether or not the forfeiture shall be in fee or for life. But, 
sir, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] and others have in- 
dicated a desire to move amendments here, repealing the joint resolution 
of the last Congress, which, on the suggestion of the President, embodied 
the language of the Constitution. The eiFect of such repeal will be to 
leave the original law in full force. Its execution Avill then be attempted 
without regard to the Constitution, and the officers of the Government 
will at once seize upon and sell the property in fee. The vendee will hold 
it absolutely, and the burden of contesting its validity will be thrown upon 
children and heirs whose rights the Constitution intended should be guard- 
ed. Therefore, the question comes up properly on this bill, whether we 
shall allow any such unconstitutional measure to pass ; for even by the 
bill of the gentleman from Iowa, without any of the amendments pro- 
posed, we would be holding out to the judges and to the instruments of 
this administration, a lure to lead them on to follow up this confiscation 
system for some bad purpose or other. I honor the judiciary, sir, as 
much as any member ; but, in these days of loose construction and irre- 
sponsible tyranny, I am growing distrustful of all po^vers, wherever de- 
posited. Now, we know that the judge of the United States Court for 
the eastern district of Virginia, a Judge Underwood, has lately been pass- 
ing tipon this question. I do not know any thing about his cliaracter, 
judicial or otherwise, but he has decided, as I understand, in conformity 
with the argument of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Orth]. Indeed, 
the argument of the gentleman is drawn from this precious reservoir of 
learning. After quoting the constitutional clause, that 

" Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason ; but no attainder 
of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the person 
attainted ;'''' 

he has held that — 

" If we use the word ' except' in the above sense in the constitutional provision, or 
make it read, ' U7iless during the life of the person attainted,' we shall at once come to 
the true intent and meaning of the provision, to wit, that the forfeiture was to be per- 
fected during, and not after, the lifetime of the party attainted." 



340 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGEESS. 

"Wonderful jurist ! ProfouDd logician ! Sage philologist ! He actu- 
ally holds that the Avord '■^except" in the Constitution means sonaething 
else than its own common and technical meaning ; that it means " unless." 
By all the processes of his court, as I am informed, he is striving to give 
elfect to his absurd decision, by conveying the absolute title to those es- 
tates Avhich have been confiscated before him. Well, sir, if this judge, 
under the confiscation law and the joint resolution interpreting it, had a 
right to do any thing of that kind, what is the need of this legislation? 
Why is this additional legislation proposed ? The very fact that the gen- 
tleman from Iowa has brought in this bill is evidence to my mind that 
this judge is a corrupt man, and deserves impeachment for breaking down 
the existing law, which the gentleman from Iowa is now trying to amend 
so as to make such proceedings valid hereafter. The introduction of this 
bill is a stigma upon his name, which will grow blacker with time. I 
would need no other evidence of the corruption, the bad heart, and the 
perverse judgment of that judge, than the simple argument which can be 
drawn from the words of the Constitution against his mode of confiscating 
property. 

The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Orth], whose speech I had the 
pleasure of reading a few minutes since, for I could not altogether hear it 
while he was delivering it, concluded his argument with an invocation to 
the House to be virtuous, to stand firm to their duty in this time when 
the nation is reeling and staggering under the sturdy blows of organized 
treason. He appeals to us in this time to gather around the Administra- 
tion and to put down traitors and punish the guilty. Very well. I am 
with the gentleman in all that, but I should have liked his appeal better 
had he called on us to stand by the Constitution as all-sufficient for these 
purposes. In almost the same breath the gentleman says he would op- 
pose the enactment of laws which inflict cruel, harsh; or unjust punish- 
ment upon offenders. Indeed ! The question here is not how, by penal 
statutes, to reach the guilty. The guilty are already reached by the pres- 
ent law. This bill reaches beyond the guilty traitor, and involves, by a 
posthumous punishment, the innocent and good — ay, even the unborn 
children. It inflicts on the children of the guilty the punishment due to 
the parents ; and the gentleman from Indiana, who seems from his speech 
and countenance to be benevolent, shows that in fact he partakes of the 
ferocious humanity of the hour, by arguing in favor of a bill to punish 
the inoffensive offspring of the traitor. How kind his logic is may be 
seen from this extract : 

" You cannot take from one that which he hath not. You cannot rob one who is not 
possessed of any thing. I propose to take from the traitor his property before his death, 
and before it can descend to and vest in his heirs. The child has no natural right to the 
property of the father. Even in society the child cannot demand, as a social right, the 
possession of his father's estate. The father, during his lifetime, can alienate his prop- 
erty by deed of conveyance or by will to take effect at his death ; and he can by either 
process totally disinherit his children, and grant his estate to strangers. It is only in a 
certain contingency that the child obtains possession of the father's property, as where he 
dies intestate, and this right of inheritance is purely a social right, depending upon ex- 
press legislation or immemorial usage ripened into the validity and sanctity of express 
law." 

The child has no natural right to the property of the father ! What 



CIVIL WAR 341 

an unnatural proposition ! It is only " express legislation or immemorial 
usage " that gives to the child, in the absence of an unnatural Avill, the 
estate ef the father ! Truly, sir, we have fallen on evil times, when to 
bolster up a bill of penalty like this, upon the children of the guilty, the 
beautiful and sacred relations of the family are to be disrupted. I am 
shocked, that in this age. and in this country, and in this House — and 
after England, following our example, has reformed her old and bar- 
barous law, forfeiting estates in fee — I am required to stand up before the 
American people, and, as a matter of pure philanthropy and common de- 
cency, protest against the cruel and remorseless character of bills of this 
kind, and to defend the rights of those who have committed no crime, but 
upon whom it is proposed to visit, after the death of the parent, the 
crimes of the ancestor. I protest against such bills as contrary to the 
gentle and loving spirit of the Saviour, who, while upon his transcendent 
mission to this attainted and corrupted world, shielded, in his arms, the 
little ones of Jiidea. His words have a tender and sweet significance 
which it would not be unbecoming us as Christian legislators to heed : 
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it 
unto Me." Would that these words were graven upon our memories and 
hearts when we come to vote upon this harsh and vengeful measure 
against the little children of the South ! Such words interpret the Con- 
stitution by a liberal canon of kindness — more potent than ever Grotius, 
Vattel, or Stoiy conceived or expressed, or than ever modern philanthropy 
practised ! 

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Indiana, in his elaborate and learned 
speech, drew from the old feudal system, from the black-letter laws, from 
the whole history of our common law with reference to forfeiture, to show 
that there should be another and a different interpretation given to the 
Constitution from that which was given by the men who made the Con- 
stitution, by the men who passed the law of 1790 to carry out that clause 
of the Constitution to which I have referred, and by all the interpreters 
of the Constitution to whom he himself has referred. He says that the 
science of philology is progressive, and that a word which meant one 
thing at one time, and in one age, may mean another thing at another 
time, and in a different age ; and upon that principle he says that the word 
"except" in the Constitution means "unless," and then he draws, like 
the Virginia judge, the conclusion that the only meaning of the Constitu- 
tion is that the proceedings shall be commenced in the life of the person 
attainted. It will be borne in mind that the phraseology of our Constitu- 
tion was most carefully guarded. It Avas as pure and simple as the spirit 
of the Constitution was kind and liberal. The word " except" in 1787, 
had as plain a meaning then as it has now. The word " unless " was not 
its synouyme then, nor is it now, except in very rare and remote instances. 
But even if it were synonymous now, we are to find, not its meaning now 
but its meaning then : the philology of 1787 is to govern, and not its ad- 
vanced meaning now. But, suppose the gentleman should, by some 
technical logomachy, find out that the word " except " meant sometimes 
" unless ;" he does not find the word " unless" in the Constitution, and if 
he had, it would make no difference in the argument. The word " ex- 
cept," according to my philology, which has not progressed very rapidly, 



342 EIGHT YEAOJS IN CONGEESS. 

is derived from tlie Latin words ex and capio, to take from, to exclude 
from, to leave out. This is the primary, and not the secondary meaning 
into which the gentleman would distort it. This is the meaning-always 
attributed to it by all the public writers who have commented on this part 
of the Constitution. This, too, is the ordinary and simple meaning of the 
Constitution. It reads in this way, and cannot be made to read in any 
other : " But no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or 
forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." There are some 
clauses which interpret themselves. Discussion only obscvires, and does 
not elucidate their meaning. This clause is one of them. 

Now, suppose the gentleman inserts his favorite word " unless ; " how 
does that help him? It is still a limitation on the power which works 
corruption of blood or forfeiture, and that limit is during the life of the 
person attainted of treason. That word " unless " does not change the 
meaning of it at all. You may use it with all emphasis, and still the 
limitation would be on forfeiture during life. But, Mr. Speaker, there 
can be no such construction given to it. The word " except," according 
to Worcester, Webster, and all other dictionaries, in its first and best 
meaning, simply means " to exclude from ; " so that when the Constitu- 
tion said that the attainder of treason should not work forfeiture of prop- 
erty except during the life of the person attainted, it meant that the for- 
feiture should exclude the fee. It was taken out of and from the effect 
of the forfeiture. The forfeiture never went beyond the life. And there 
are good reasons for such a construction which the gentleman from Indiana 
seemed to overlook. He might have found them laid down by Judge 
Story. Pie might have found them in the United States Court decisions. 
He might have found them in the history of the English Parliament. He 
might have found them in the history of English and Irish confiscations. 
It was intended by our Constitution to prevent forever this crime of Gov- 
ernment taking from those not in legal existence, from minors, from the 
weak and helpless, from those not guilty, from those incapable of crime, 
that property which always in cases of intestacy, and generally in cases 
of will, the law gives to the children, and which, by natural right, and 
according to every code of inheritance known among men, always goes to 
the children in the absence of a will. The only authority which can be 
offered by the gentleman for his construction is this Virginia judge. The 
gentleman has brought no authority here for the purpose of sustaining his 
view — none whatever. He has evidently been diligent, and has examined 
all the authorities, and found them against him. Can the gentleman 
name one authority which sustains his views of the case except this trashy 
decision of Judge Underwood? Not one. He relies solely on his pro- 
gressive philology. So it is progressive. This war is teaching us many 
new meanings to old words and terms. A patriot used to mean one who 
loved his whole country ; who was devoted, by a principle of sympathy 
and union, to every part ; who had a common feeling and a common in- 
terest with those who lived under the same Government, who are contained 
within the same natural or historical boundaries ; who cherished the tie 
that holds the country together, and who held that evil to any part of 
their fellow-countrymen was evil' to themselves. Now it means other- 
wise. Philology is progressive. Now a patriot is one who can break the 



CIVIL WAK. 343 

Bup'^enie law, who can hate half his nation, who can rejoice in the bayonet 
at the election, and tlie greenback in corruption ; who is anxious to see a 
war of extermination, and who, as the climax of his devotion, is willing 
to see the last one of his wife's blood-relations offered vipon the altar, and 
the innocent offspring of the South turned homeless and penniless upon 
the cold and unfeeling world for crimes in which they could not be par- 
ticipants ! Philology is progressive. A traitor now is a man who loves 
the old order, Avho dislikes to see the old Constitution dismantled, who is 
willing to make any sacrifice that will restore the Union, and whose very 
love of those who used to be under the same old family roof-tree amounts 
to such a sympathy that he would love to have them all restored. A 
philanthropist used to mean a friend of man. Now it means a friend of 
the black ; or, rather, such friendship as drags the negro from home, hap- 
piness, and content, to pauperism, crime, and starvation ! Philology is 
progressive. But Judge Story did not progress like the gentleman from 
Indiana in his philology. He kept the old meaning of the fathers, which 
was for all time. My friend from Indiana said that he could find but 
little wi'itten by our commentators upon this mooted clause of the Consti- 
tution. When he turned to Judge Curtis he found but one single sen- 
tence : " The punishment is not prescribed by the Constitution. It is left 
to be prescribed by Congress ; Avith the limitation, however, that no con- 
viction for treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of property 
except during the life of the offender." 

The matter was so plain to Judge Curtis that he could make but little 
commentary upon it. So it was with Judge Story. After quoting the 
clause in question, he says : 

" Two motives probably concurred in introducing it as an express power. One was, 
not to leave it open to implication whether it was to be exclusively punishable with death, 
according to the known rule of the common law, and with the barbarous accompaniments 
pointed out by it, but to confide the punishment to the discretion of Congress. The 
other was, to impose some limitation upon the nature and extent of the punishment, 
so that it should not work corruption of blood or forfeiture beyond the life of the offender. 
****** 

" It surely is enough for society to take the life of the offender, as a just punishment 
of his crime, without taking from his offspring and relatives that property which may be 
the only means of saving them from poverty and ruin. It is bad policy, too ; for it cuts 
off all the attachments which these unfortunate victims might otherwise feel for their own 
Government, and prepares them to engage in any other service by which their supposed 
injuries may be redressed or their hereditary hatred gratified. Upon these and similar 
grounds it may be presumed that the clause was first introduced into the original draft of 
the Constitution ; and, after some amendments, it was adopted without any apparent re- 
sistance. By the laws since passed by Congress it is declared that no conviction or judg- 
ment for any capital or other offences shall work corruption of blood or any forfeiture of 
estate. The history of other countries abundantly proves that one of the strong incen- 
tives to prosecute offences as treason has been the chance of sharing in the plunder of the 
victims. Rapacity has been thus stimulated to exert itself in the service of the most cor- 
rupt tyranny ; and tyranny has been thus furnished with new opportunities of indulging 
its malignity and revenge ; of gratifying its envy of the rich and good ; and of increas- 
ing its means to reward favorite^ and secure retainers for the worst deeds." — 3 Story's 
Commentaries, p. 170. 

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Indiana could find no reason for the 
construction which Judge Story gives, but that eminent jurist does find a 
good and satisfactoiy reason for the limitation of the punishment, and he 



344 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

gives it in the extract which has just been read. Can there be a greater 
reason against extending a penal law than the fact that such extension 
will work harm to the innocent, and encourage tyranny, rapacity, cruelty, 
and murder ? To say nothing of the impolicy of breaking down allegiance 
to the Government by such a system of injustice, the reasons I have 
quoted are sufficient to answer all that the gentleman from Indiana has 
said in favor of his construction. 

Mr. Orth. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a single ques- 
tion : whether he takes the position that this bill now before us, or any 
pending amendments to it, will work corruption of blood ? 

Mr. Cox. This bill, wdth the pending amendments? 

Mr. Orth. Yes, sir. Will it work corruption of blood? 

Mr. Cox. It cannot work corruption of blood under our Constitution. 
There can be no such thing as corruption of blood. 

Mr. Orth. I ask the gentleman furthermore whether the authority 
read from Judge Story does not apply, and do not his remarks apply, to 
the fact of corruption of blood ? 

Mr. Cox. It applies to this very clause of the Constitution : 

" Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder 
of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the per- 
son attainted." 

It is on that Judge Story is commenting. The gentleman argued that 
there had been in England abuses with regard to corruption of blood and 
forfeiture of estates. Persons had been found guilty of treason after death, 
and estates had been forfeited after the person attainted had died. Mon- 
strous abuses had gi'own in consequence of declaring the blood to be attaint- 
ed after death ; men were so blackened by the attaint that they could not 
transmit an inheritance to theii- descendants. Premising these facts of 
history, the gentleman argued that the object of this mooted clause of our 
Constitution was to prevent such abuses. That was the main point of the 
gentleman's argument. That it is a gross fallacy I shall demonstrate. 
He said, and said very truly : 

" In further support of my position, let me advert to the fact that in England, long 
prior to and at the adoption of our Constitution, attainder of treason after the death of 
the supposed traitor (I mean his natural death before trial or even accusation) was of fre- 
quent occurrence. This was a monstrous doctrine, shocking to every principle of justice 
upon which the criminal code is founded, to accuse a man of crime after death, when 
none is to speak for his innocence, to proceed to trial and judgment, to wrest from inno- 
cent hands that property which by law upon his death descended to and vested in his 
heirs, and forfeit their property, and not his property, to the Government for his supposed 
criminal conduct. Is it not more just and reasonable to suppose that the Constitution 
intended to embrace and provide against this monstrous perversion of natural justice, than 
that it intended so absurd a proposition as that the forfeiture of estate should only be for 
that brief period of time between sentence of death and its execution ? " 

I answer the question the gentleman puts by saying that it is mon- 
strous, that it is a great and grievous wrong, thus to attaint a man and for- 
feit his estate after his death. The history of England in that regard is 
red with blood and black with cruelty. But from it our fathers learned a 
lesson. To stain tlie memory after death, to corrupt the blood after it had 
ceased to pulsate, and to " rob the innocent posterity of the inheritance 
which, by the laws of the realm, had descended to and vested in them, as 



CIVIL WAE. 345 

the lawful descendants of their ancestor," was so revoltuig to every sense 
of right and justice, that I join with the gentleman in execrating such 
baseness. The creative minds Avhicli gave form, life, beauty, and sym- 
metry to our Federal system did not tolerate such barbarous codes. They 
saw these monstrosities. Ay, sir, and in our matchless Constitution they 
provided against their occurrence here in this free and better country ; 
hut not by the clause to which the gentleman would refer. If the gentleman 
had read the Constitution and the authoritative commentary more care- 
fully, he would have found in a previous clause of the Constitution, which 
says that " no bill of attainder or ex jjost facto law shall be passed," the 
solution of the problem which he discussed. He would then have seen 
how amply our fathers guarded against those monstrous abuses of power 
wliich reached into the tomb and dishonored and disinherited those who 
surviving mourned. The argument of the gentleman is answered by re- 
ferring him to that sweeping clause of the Constitution against all attain- 
ders. Judge Story says, in speaking of that very clause : 

" Such acts have often been resorted to in foreign Governments as a common engine 
of State ; and even in England they have been pushed to the most extravagant extent in 
bad times, reaching as well to the absent and the dead as to the living. Sir Edward Coke 
has mentioned it to be among the transcendent powers of Parliament, that an act may he 
passed to attaint a man after he is dead. And the reigning monarch who was slain at 
Bosworth, is said to have been attainted by an act of Parliament a few )no7iths after his 
death, notwithstanding the absurdity of deeming him at once in possession of the throne 
and a traitor. The punishment has often been inflicted without calling upon the party 
accused to answer, or without even the formality of proof, and sometimes because the 
law in its ordinary course of proceedings would acquit the offender. The mjustice and 
iniquity of such acts in general constitute an irresistible argument against the existence 
of the power. In a free Government it would be intolerable, and in the hands of a reign- 
ing faction it might be, and probably would be, abused to the ruin and death of the most 
virtuous citizens. Bills of this sort have been most usually passed in England in times 
of rebellion, or of gross subserviency to the Crown, or of violent political excitements — 
periods in which all nations are most liable (as well the free as the enslaved) to forget 
their duties and to trample upon the rights and liberties of others." — 3 Story, p. 210. 

The wrong complained of by the gentleman is one for which he finds a 
remedy in another clause which he supposes was intended to limit the pro- 
ceedings and not the forfeiture of estate to the life of the person attainted. 
Being thus simply provided against in the clause of the Constitution against 
bills of attainder, what other intention or use can there be for the clause 
in controversy except to limit the forfeiture' of the estate during the life of 
the person attainted? 

I have agreed with the gentleman from Indiana in condemning, with all 
the severity of language, the attaint after death and the robbing of the inno- 
cent children who would legally take the estate. But, as a matter of enlight- 
ened law, public decency, and Christian morality, I cannot perceive how 
such a case differs from the bill before us, which he sustains, and which 
proposes to despoil the children of their inheritance for the crime of the 
parent. Does it make the one a more heinous wrong that the attaint is 
after death and the property had already descended by statute? No, sir ; 
the outrage in both cases consists in robbing the helpless and weak, in pun- 
ishing the innocent for the guilty. To prevent this, in the interest of 
society and in the sacred name of the family, and to save the innocent 
from shame as well as from want, our Constitution declares, that the for- 



346 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

fciture should not go beyond the life of the person attainted. The grave 
shall liide his shame. The child shall begin its life clear from stain, un- 
sullied from the attaint of its parent's life, and the inheritance it had ex- 
pected from the physical source of its being, shall not be snatched away 
by unlincal hands or tyrannic rapacity. 

Too abundantly does history cumulate the proof of the unwisdom of 
such legislation as that proposed by this bill. Such legislation is the pre- 
mium which has ever been offered by power to the cormorants "who cling 
to it, in order to perpetuate itself by sharing in the plunder. It is the re- 
ward Avhich the dominant dynasty always gives to the gilded fiies which 
buzz about the corpse of its victim to fatten on its corruption. Perhaps 
the saddest illustrations which this evil time will furnish of its lustful de- 
generacy, "wiU be tlie clamoring of the partisan spies, informers, and mer- 
cenaries, who, too cowardly to meet the enemy in fight, will follovv^ in the 
wake of our armies to speculate upon the plantations and estates which 
the rebellion has forfeited, but which the Constitution, iu its beautiful be- 
nignity, would have saved to the innocent inheritor. 

Is it necessary to add further authority as to the impolicy or unconsti- 
tutionality of this bill? I might appeal to the writings of the gentleman 
who has been employed by the Secretary of War to codify the laws of 
war. I mean the Dr. Francis Liuber who wrote so Avell of public law 
and liberty before he had official employment. I could read from his vol- 
ume on " Civil Liberty " to show the scope and spirit of that part of the 
Constitution under debate. He says " that the true protection of individ- 
ual property demands likewise the exclusion of confiscation" — 

Mr. Stevens. As the gentleman from Ohio is discussing a grave 
matter, let me ask him a question. 

Mr. Cox. Certainly, sir. 

Mr. Stevens. The Constitution provides that Congress shall have 
power to declare the punishment of treason ; but no attainder of treason 
shall work corraption of blood or forfeiture. Now, has not Congress 
power to punish other than by attainder, and if that other punishment is 
the forfeiture of estate, does it violate the first clause of the Constitution ? 

Mr. Cox, I answer the gentleman by referring him to the President's 
message. [Laughter.] The President, in his message to the last Con- 
gress, held that to divest the title forever — " for treason and ingredients 
of treason " — was imconstitutional. You passed the joint resolution to 
obviate his scruples. The gentleman must stand by the Administration. 
I charge him with being a traitor or a secessionist if he now desert Mr. 
Lincoln. [Great laughter.] I hope my friend from Pennsylvania, after 
so long hurling his envenomed shafts of satire against this side of the 
House l)ecause Ave did not always sustain the President, AviU not himself 
fail of liis loyalty. There may be other punishments beside the forfeiture ; 
but the punishment you now propose, and which I am now discussing, is 
unconstitutionaL So says the Administration. I proudly stand by the 
Administration on tliis point. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Stevens. I understand the gentleman as not giving his own 
opinions, but those of Mr. Lincoln. 

Mr. Cox. When interrupted, I was giving the views of others — Judge 
Story, Judge Curtis, and Dr. Lieber. I am not prepared to say that aU 



CIVIL WAK. 



347 



of Mr. Lincoln's views on that subject are the best. I only say that they 
should be binding upon that side of the House Avho have so often urged 
that failing to sustain the Administration you fail to sustain the Govern- 
ment. Where, then, do gentlemen stand? Opposing the constitutional 
views of their chief! How handsomely you look before the country in 
that capacity, after your philippics against our disloyalty ! Here is a bill 
which involves the very exercise of the highest sovereign power — confis- 
cation of the estates of persons absolutely — a scheme of forfeiture involv- 
ing hundreds, nay, thousands of millions of dollars, or of landed estates,* 
involving in its consequences the prolongation of war and the proci-astina- 
tion of peace, involving the very fate of this Union and all the immense 
interests imboimd with it to the latest generations, and about which the 
President was so anxious that he took the extraordinary trouble to send 
an admonitory message to prevent his friends committing a flagrant breach 
of the Constitution, advising them that he Avould veto the measure for its 
gross unconstitutionality ; yet gentlemen stand here, after the lapse of a 
year or more, and by some '' progressive philology " undertake to convict 
and censure their owti Executive, overrule his matured judgment and 
sacred oath, and by failing to give him ihfi required support on so momen- 
tous a measure, become, by their own cogent logic, traitors to the Grovern- 
ment ! 

Mr. Broomall. The Constitution, punishing treason, allows the 
alternative of fine and imprisonment to be imposed. If, then, the fine be 
levied upon the oifender's land, and that land is sold, I want to know 
whether the purchaser would only take a life estate ? 

Mr. Cox. Certainly, sir. Under an honest and fearless judiciary, up- 
holding the Constitution as the supreme law, he would only get a life 
estate. This may be an absurd conclusion ; but I know that Judge Story 
does not think it absurd, nor does the history of these confiscations show 



* The debate having been hurriedly forced on the House, I had not the time to pre- 
pare any statements as to the property proposed to be reached by the Bill. The following 
table, from the Census of 1860, will approximate to it ; 

Statemerd of the No. of Acres of Land, Improved and Unimproved, Cash Value of 
Farms, and the No. of White Children under Fifteen Years of Age. 



States. 



North Carolina 
South Carolma. 

Georgia 

Alabama 

Mississippi . . . , 

Louisiana 

Florida 

Tennessee 

Arkansas 

Total 



Lands 
Impeoted. 



Acres. 



6,517,284 
4,572,060 
8,062,758 
6,462,987 
5,150,008 
2,734,901 
676,464 
6,897,974 
1,933,036 



43,007,472 



Lands 
Unimpeoved. 



AOKES. 



17,245,685 
11,623,860 
18,587,732 
12,687,913 
11,703,556 
6,765,879 
2,273,008 
13,457,960 
7,609,938 



101,955,531 



Cash Valtte of 
Faems. 



DOLLAES. 



143,301,065 
139,652,508 
157,072,803 
172,176,168 
186,866,914 
215,565,421 

16,371,684 
272,555,054 

91,673,403 



White 
Children 
under 15 

Years. 



265,496 
121,386 
264,800 
238,704 
157,588 
141,741 
34,621 
364,518 
154,296 



1,395,235,020 1,743,150 



348 EIGHT YEAKS EST CONGRESS. 

it to be absurd. By no scheme or device can you directly or indirectly 
forfeit the estate for treason, except in pursuance of the Constitution. 

Mr. Broomall. If the same individual should be indicted before some 
court for stealing chickens, and fined ten dollars, and his lands sold for the 
fine, could the estate be sold in fee ? 

Mr. Cox. If the gentleman Avould get a civU judgment, take out a 
fieri facias, and make a levy, then I suppose he could sell the fee. But 
that question of stealing chickens does not interest my constituents [laugh- 
ter], at least those who are white. Besides, there are reasons growing 
out of the difference between the political crime of treason and the malum 
in se involved in stealing, which led our ancestors to frame the clause in 
question. 

When interrupted by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, I was about to 
call the attention of the House to Dr. Lieber's volume. He may not be 
good authority for my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kellet], who 
has informed the House that he is in communication with him, though he 
told us that he preferred his own instincts to Dr. Lieber's reason. He 
argued the other day that he would rather trust his own instincts of liberty 
than the authority of the war codjfier. We have had too mvlch legislation 
" upon instinct." I think at the time Dr. Lieber wrote the volume from 
which I was about to quote, that he was looking at the spirit of the law 
with that large roundabout common-sense view which a student of Mon- 
tesquieu might well take ; and with that enlarged observation he tells us : 

" The true protection of individual property demands lil^ewise the exclusion of con- 
fiscation. For although confiscation, as a punishment, is to be rejected on account of the 
undefined character of the punishment, depending not upon itself, but upon the foct 
whether the punished person has any property and how much, it is likewise inadmissible 
on the ground fhat individual property implies individual transmission, which confiscation 
totally destroys. It would perhaps not be wholly unjust to deprive an individual of his 
property, as a puoishment for certain crimes, if we would allow it to pass to his heirs. 
We do it in fact when we imprison a man for life, and submit him to the regular prison 
discipline, disallowing him any benefit of the property he may possess ; but it is imjust 
to deprive his children or other heirs of the individual property, not to speak of the appe- 
tizing effect which confiscation of property has often produced upon governments. 

" The English attainder and corruption of blood, so far as it affects property, is hos- 
tile to this great principle of the utmost protection of individual property, and has come 
down to the present times from a period of semi-communism, when the king was con- 
sidered the primary owner of all land. Corruption of blood is distinctly abolished by our 
Constitution." — Dr. Lieber on Civil Liberty, vol. i., p. 123. 

What does the learned publicist mean by the " appetizing effect of con- 
fiscation upon Governments " ? Did his prescient mind take in the adju- 
dications of Judge Underwood? Did he look forward to the auction at 
Alexandria? Did he see town lots and Arlington heights under the ham- 
mer? And did he see how little enthusiasm life-estates produced, and 
what an appetizing effect the fee simple would liave produced? Has the 
learned doctor struck, in his comprehensive reasoning, the motive for this 
bill ? I charge that the object of this bill is to make a case in the courts, 
if possible, whereby some Judge like Underwood, by a corrupt, unjust, 
and dishonest decision, may overturn the organic law to give a quasi-abso- 
lute title, and thus place the burden on the heirs hereafter of contesting 
for their rights, and by harassing and oppressing the innocent and help- 
less, gain that possession which proverbially is nine points of the law in 



CIVIL WAE. ' 349 

favor of its continuance. It may well be asked by a considerate legisla- 
tor, bow long will tbe innocent beirs remain out of tbeir property if tbey 
must sue and await tbe decision of tbe question in tbe counts ? Sball it 
be until tbey attain tbeir majority, orwben? After tbe property basbecn 
once taken, tbere will, I fear, be but little remedy in tbe courts, for tbe 
judiciary itself may be tbe next department to cower before tbe bebests of 
power and tbe "military necessity" of tbe bour. 

Mr. Speaker, I am opposed to tbis bill, because I bave gleaned 
from bistory a profound distrust of all sueb measures as a means of 
restoring allegiance and order. It is tbe system of revenge. It is 
bate enacted into law. It wiU not and it cannot come to good. It 
is unchristian. Indeed, any system wbicb does not restore good will and 
kindness between tbe two sections, and especially if it robs tbe coming 
generation, "will only tend to perpetuate with tbe children tbe hate which 
w,e might hope would evanish with time. Such a system is tbe very 
wantonness and excess of tyranny. It always has in it a self-punishing 
and corrective power. It carries a Nemesis with it as inexorable as fate. 
Tbe bistory of Poland, Venetia, and Ireland should make us pause. Do 
we indeed desire to restore our Union? Do we desire to keep our plight 
to the Constitution ? Do we crave in our hearts the return of that happier 
time when our public order reposed securely in the hearts of the people 
and in reverence for the Constitution? If we do, let us rather repeal oar 
former harsh and vindictive legislation, and not enact otber and harsher 
penalties ; and if war must needs go on, if blood, blood, blood must stiU 
flow, and force must still be used against those who were once our breth- 
ren in the same nationality, then let us add to that force at every moment 
of decided success to our arms, at every pause in the dread conflict, the 
benignant policy of conciliation. 

Mr. Kellet. Will the gentleman from Ohio permit me to ask him 
the reference of his quotation from Dr. Lieber? 

Mr. Cox. I wiU give it to tbe gentleman. 

Mr. Kellet. I do not know whether bis quotation is a correct one, 
for tbe doctor has protested that the gentleman has always misquoted him, 
and charged him with entertaining opinions tbe reverse of Avhat his 
opinions really are. 

Mr. Cox. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, when be says I have 
misquoted Dr. Lieber, cannot be correct, for I bave not pretended to quote 
him until to-day. I said the otber day tbat he was opposed to tbe unre- 
publican scheme of conscription. I have the authority, and 1 will pro- 
duce it at tbe proper time. 

Mr. Kelley. If tbe gentleman will permit me, I would like to bave 
the doctor himself speak upon tbis subject. I hold in my hand a note 
from the doctor, of tbe date of December 6, 1863. 

Mr, Cox, The gentleman from Pennsylvania is not quite as logical 
as I could wish, I do not pi'opose now to discuss tbe conscription bill. 
I will pay my respects hereafter to the gentleman on tbat subject. 

Mr. Kelley, I would rather the question be between the gentleman 
from Ohio and the gentleman he quoted as authority than between the 
gentleman and myself. 

Lir. Cox. T should feel it a much greater honor if it were so. 



350 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

|_Laugliter.] I was about to conclude by oue general observation. The 
members upon this side of the House have not made, and do not intend 
to make, any factious opposition to this Administration. We intend to 
sustain it to the fullest extent of our ability in every legal way which it 
may mark out — in every way possible by Avhich we can restore the old 
order of things in this country. Our views do not always agree with 
your views as to the best mode of restoring the Union and preserving the 
Constitution. If we could but agree upon one object — the rehabilitation 
of the States, with all their rights, dignity, and equality unimpaired — 
though our views may be diverse as to the means to attain that object, 
this Congress might carve out a historic fame as the restorer of that con- 
stitutional freedom which the last Congi-ess did so much to destroy. 
Upon this side we will sustain any measure to put down rebellion which 
is warranted by the Constitution. But we will never lay sacrilegious 
hands upon the ark of our covenant. We constitute the constitutional op- 
position to this Administration. We have no opposition except it be in- 
spired by that instrument. Its written grants of power, its limitations, 
and, especially in these times, its reserved powers, furnish the enginery 
of our antagonism. Drawing from this source, we fear no criticism. 
We defy all aspersions. Come evil or good report, we will labor — it 
may be in vain — to protect that instrument against any such breaches as 
that proposed by this bill and legislation of like character. Since I have 
been a member of this House I have labored, Avithout rest, to make up in 
vigilance and study what I lacked in years and experience, that I might 
perform my whole duty to my constituents ; and with one object ever up- 
permost in my mind — the object which Daniel Webster held to be first 
with a free people — the preservation of their liberty by maintaining con- 
stitutional restraints and just divisions of power. 

Mr. Orth. Before the gentleman from Ohio takes his seat, I would 
like to ask him one or two questions, and I have no doubt he will answer 
them without hesitation. My first question is, whether he is in favor of 
punishing the traitors who have been guilty of bringing on this rebellion ? 

Mr. Cox. Yes, sir. I am in favor of punishing traitors according 
to the Constitution, by trial, by conviction, and by all the modes pointed 
out for the punishment of treason. 

Mr. Orth. I have no doubt of that. My next question is, whether 
he is in favor of punishing traitors by the death penalty ? 

Mr. Cox. Yes, sir ; and almost every day I have been voting money 
and men to inflict that penalty. 

Mr. Orth. I would ask him whether taking from innocent children 
the life of the father who sustains them, is not visiting the sins of the 
parent on the children ? 

Mr. Cox. Yes, sir ; that is one of the incidents which, perhaps, 
might ha\e once been avoided, but which we cannot now avoid, but for 
Avhich, praise Cod ! I am not responsible. 

Now, I wish to ask the gentleman whether he is in favor of punishing 
innocent persons for the guilt of their parents ? 

Mr. Orth. No, sir. 

Mr. Cox. Well, sir, then you must be against this bill. 



I 



CIVIL WAB. 351 

Mr. Orth. I contend that we punish those who are guiUj durino' 
their lifetimes. 

Mr. Cox. I would be very glad to welcome the gentleman within the 
pale of humanity. 

Mr. Garfield. I wish to ask my colleague a question, not with any 
factious purpose, nor with any design to prevent a calm discussion of so 
important a question as this. I am sorry that this discussion has assumed 
a somewhat partisan character. It ought not to have that character at all, 
and so far as I am concerned it shall not. I wish to ask my colleague a 
practical rather than a legal question. I wish to know whether the ob- 
jection he raises to this bill is not itself obnoxious to this objection : we 
punish men for civil and for criminal offences, great and small, in all the 
higher and lower courts of the country, by taking tlieu' property from them, 
so that their children can never have the benefit of it after the parent's 
death. Now, Avhile we do this constantly in our courts, by civil and crim- 
inal process, does not my colleague propose to make an exception in favor 
of the crime of treason ? Why should not the children of traitors suffer 
the same kind of loss and inconvenience as the children of thieves and of 
other felons do? I ask the gentleman whether his position does not in- 
volve this great absurdity and injustice? 

Mr. Cox. I will say to my colleague that, as he knows very well, in 
criminal procedures we do not at once by execution reach the real estate. 
But my colleague cannot v/itlidraw me from my constitutional position as 
to this bill. AH I propose to do in opposing this bill is to stand by the 
Constitution, and to stand by it all the time, regardless of consequences ; 
and I will ask my distinguished colleague how he reads that clause of the 
Constitution under debate. Does he believe in the construction wdiich has 
been given to it by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Orth] ? Does he 
believe that he can constitutionally take a traitor's property forever, or 
only during his life ? Does he read the Constitution in opposition to Judge 
Story and to Judge Curtis ? "Would he set aside the construction given to 
it by the law of 1790? Or would he, dare he, with his oatli upon him, 
now break the Constitution by voting for this measure, in order to get 
absolute title to the lands of those in revolt? Would he, to aggravate the 
punishment of the traitor, or to punish the innocent children of the rebels, 
break the Constitution? 

Mr. Garfield. I would not break the Constitution for any such 
purpose. 

Mr. Cox. I am very glad to hear that. 

Mr. Garfield. I would not break the Constitution at all, unless it 
should become necessary to overleap its barriers to save the Government 
and the Union. But I do not see that in this bill we do break the 
Constitution. If the gentleman can show me that it violates the Consti- 
tution, I will vote against it with him, even though every member of my 
party votes for it ; that makes no difTcrence to me. I will say, however, 
that I had supposed that the intention of that clause of the Constitution 
was to prevent the punishment of treason when an individual was declared 
guilty of it after his death. I had supposed that that Avas the purpose of 
it, and if so, it seems that this biU is not obnoxious to the objection which 
the gentleman raises to it. 



352 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGEESS. 

Mr. Cox. If the gentleman wiE examine that other clause of the 
Constitution which I pointed out, he will find, as Judge Story found, that 
it provided for the outrage of trial and punishment of treason after the 
death of the person, by prohibiting all bills of attainder. The other clause 
of the Constitution is so exceedingly plain that the wayfaring man — even 
Mr. Lincoln himself — did not err in construing it. 



MISCEGENATION. 

FATE OF THE FREEDMAN IMPROTIDEXT E5IANCIPATI0N CONSTITUTIONAL PROTISIONS COlt- 

SIDERED — LAWS OF PDYSIOLOGT BLENDING OF RACES PROGRESSITE ABOLITION — DEMOC- 
RACY NOT PRO-SLAVERY NON-INTERVENTION ABOUT THE NEGRO. 

On the 17th of February, 1864, the House were considering the bill 
to establish a Bureau of Freedman's Affairs, when, by a diversion from 
the regular debate, the subject of "Miscegenation" came up. The pam- 
phlet upon which Mr. Cox based his remarks, afterwards turned out to 
be apocryphal. It was written by two young men connected with the 
New York press. So congenial were its sentiments with those of the 
leading Abolitionists, and so ingeniously was its irony disguised, that it 
was not only indorsed by the fanatical leaders all over the land, but no one 
in Congress thought of questioning the genuineness and.seriousness of the 
document. This species of logical irony has been used by writers of 
gi-eater fame than the authors of the pamphlet. Burke used it, and 
Archbishop Whately used it ; the former to vindicate civilization, and 
the latter Christianity. The " Historic Doubts concerning Napoleon," 
by Whately, found its believers ; and many a sceptic embraced its most 
absurd conclusions in his eagerness to repudiate the truth. 

The speech given below had a very extensive circulation in the press 
of the country. The Republicans were much puzzled by the frankness of 
their secret champion. Mr. Beecher's paper indulged a suspicion that 
the author was not altogether in earnest ; but in the same article it uttered 
the same sentiments contained in the pamphlet. On the 25th of February, 
1864, in an article on the union of races, he " agreed with a large portion 
of these pages," referring to the pamphlet. He contended that every 
great nation had been married into its greatness by a union of many stocks. 
To quote : 

" Like a coat of many colors, every great nation is a patchwork out of the shreds and 
remnants of former nations. The American people is, in like manner, a stock of many 
grafts. An amalgamation of races is going on here to an extent almost without a parallel 
in history. Every nation under the sun is making some gift of its blood to our American 
veins. Immigration from forcig-n lands was never so multitudinous as now. Leaving out 
of view our native-born Americans of English descent, there are enough of other stocks 
CD this soil to make three other nations— namely, the Irish, the Germans, and the Ne- 



CIVIL WAE. 353 

groes. Even the negroes number one million more than the whole population of the 
United States at the adoption of the Constitution. But these three stocks have not come 
hither to establish themselves as distinct peoples ; but each to join itself to each, till all 
together shall be built up into the monumental nation of the earth ! We believe the 
whole human race are one family — born, every individual, with a common prerogative to 
do the best he can for his own welfare ; that in political societies, all men, of whatever 
various race or color, should stand on an absolute equality before the law ; that whites 
and blacks should intermarry if they wish, and should not unless they wish ; that the 
negro is not to be allowed to remain in this country, but is to remain here without being 
allowed — asking nobody's permission but his own ; that we shall have no permanent set- 
tlement of the negro question till our haughtier white blood, looking at the face of a ne- 
gro, shall forget that he is black, and remember only that he is a citizen. Whether or 
not the universal complexion of the human family at the millenni'im " will not be white 
or black, but brown or colored," we certainly believe that the African-tinted members of 
our community will in the future gradually bleach out their blackness. The facts of to- 
day prove this beyond denial. Already three-fourths of the colored people of the United 
States have white blood in their veins. The two bloods have been gradually intermin- 
gling ever since there were whites and blacks among our population. This intermingling 
will continue. Under slavery,|^t has been forced and frequent. Under freedom it will be 
voluntary and infrequent. But by-and-by — counting the years not by Presidential cam- 
paigns, but by centuries — the negro of the South, growing paler with every generation, 
will at last completely hide his face under the snow." 

Dr. Cheever's paper, " The Priacipia," accepting the theory of the 
pamphlet, and commending its earnest thought, said that it needed not a 
tithe of it to prove that God has made of one blood all nations of men, 
endowed them with equal rights, and that they are entitled to all the civil 
and political prerogatives and privileges of other citizens. 

The " Tribune" of the 16th of March, 1864, urged the intelligent dis- 
cussion of the subject, and accepting the " one blood" theory, drew the 
conclusion, 

" That, under the Constitution in its most liberal interpretation, and admitting our 
cherished American doctrine of equal human rights, if a white man pleases to marry a 
black woman, the mere fact that she is black gives no one a right to interfere to prevent 
or set aside such marriage. We do not say that such union would be wise, but we do 
distinctly assert that society has nothing to do with the wisdom of matches, and that we 
shall have to the end of the chapter a great many foolish ones which laws are powerless 
to prevent. We do not say that such matches would be moral ; but we do declare that 
they would be infinitely more so than the promiscuous concubinage which has so long 
shamelessly prevailed upon the Southern plantations. If a man can so far conquer his re- 
pugnance to a black woman as to make her the mother of his children, we ask, in the 
name of the divine law and of decency, why he should not marry her ? " 

Another remarkable phase of this discussion was the queries pro- 
pounded by Robert Dale Owen, Dr. S. G. Howe, and Col. McKaye, Com- 
missioners on the Freedman, as to the capacity and condition of the 
mtilatto, his offspring, and their tendency to bodily and mental decay. 
"The Anglo- African " of the 20th February, 1864, retorted very pungently 
upon these querists, and informed them that as the two publishers and one 
editor of " The Anglo-African" had had born to them in lawful wedlock 
no less than twenty-nine children, of whom twenty are now living — 
some married and budding — they could not help regarding the queries as 
in a measure personal and impertinent. 
23 



354 EIGHT YEAKS EST CONGEESS. 

In its issue of the next week, these publishers and editor — so blessed 
in their sweet domestic fecundity — took ujt the speech which follows, and 
the reference in it made to themselves. They explained what was other- 
wise obscure ; and added a very clever though illogical jeu d'esprit, which 
is quoted below as an encouraging sample of African wit. It is agreeable 
to find such exhibitions. They do much to reconcile us to the belief that 
if negro suffrage shall ever be accomplished, we shall have, now and then, 
a very sprightly suffragan of the miscegen stamp. The article is as fol- 
lows : 

" What we mean by complementary is this : a perfect man, or race, is made of a va- 
riety of characteristics or i-accs ; wanting any of these characterietics he falls short in so 
far of perfection. These characteristics, or several of them, are therefore complementary 
to the perfection of the individual or the race. Hence, two races, holding nearly the same 
characteristics, can make little if any improvement on either. The Indian and Spanish 
races, especially in Mexico, have strong physical and intellectual resemblances ; hence, 
they are not complementary of each other. The Negro and the Arian (generally called 
Caucasian) races have opposite and complementary characteristics, physically and men- 
tally, or more properly, psychically ; hence they are likely, by their admixture, to produce 
a more perfect race than either are separately. We may add, it is a dim perception of this 
great truth, which has instituted the ' Curious Inquiry ' mentioned in another column of 
this paper, and which frightens such pure white men as Hon. S. S. Cox, of Ohio. To take 
an illustration nearer home. Our country, to-day, needs patriots. It will be generally ad- 
mitted that any ' cross ' between Hon. S. S. Cox and Vallandigham would fail to pro- 
duce a patriot, for the simple and obvious reason that in both the blood runs the other 
way. But, per contra, if we should get up a ' cross ' between Hon. S. S. Cox and Capt. 
Robert Small, the result would be an average miscegen and a superior patriot." 

It is, however, a little humiliating to think that so many shining lights 
like the editor of " The Anglo- African," should never have suspected the 
peculiar character of the pamphlet. To the speech : 

Mr. Cox said : Mr. Speaker, I did not rise for the purpose of discuss- 
ing this measure, only to have it referred for discussion. I shall only 
call attention to its general featvires. The member who introduced it [Mr. 
Eliot] recalled to our minds the fact that we opposed the confiscation bill 
for its inhumanity. He hoped that humane considerations would prevail 
as to this bill. I wish that he had set a better example, by his voice and 
vote upon the other measure. This bill is founded in part on the confis- 
cation system. If that were inhuman, then this is its aggravation. The 
former takes the lands which are abandoned by loyal or disloyal whites, 
under the pressure of war ; while the present bill turns these abandoned 
lands over to the blacks. But motives of humanity, however pure, are 
not the motives which should prompt legislation altogether. I only refer 
to the confiscation part of the measure to show how comprehensive and 
all-reaching is this scheme. The industrious gentleman from Massachu- 
setts [Mr. Eliot] states that he is the author of the confiscation bill, of 
which this bill is the sequel. 

Mr, Eliot. I did not say that I was the author of the confiscation 
bill. I said that I reported it from the Select Committee that had that 
matter in charge. 

Mr. Cox. The gentleman's modesty will not permit him to claim the 



civrL WAR. 355 

credit of it. I rather think that all of these measures spring from the fer- 
tile brain of the Solicitor of the War Office [Mr. Whiting]. He is the 
reservoir of all the Republican heresy and legislation proposed in this 
House ; though he is often confounded, I think, with Divine Providence, 
to whom gentlemen are erroneously in the habit of attributing these aboli- 
tion measures. 

But to return to the member from Massachusetts. The effect of former 
legislation has been, in his opinion, to bring under the control of the Gov- 
ernment large multitudes of freedmen who " had ceased to be slaves, but 
had not learned how to be free." To care for these multitudes he presents 
this bill, Avhich, if not crude and undigested, yet is sweeping and revolu- 
tionary. It begins a policy for this Federal Government of limited and 
express powers, so latitudinarian that the whole system is changed. If 
the acts of confiscation and the proclamations, on which this measure is 
founded, be usurpations, how can we who have denounced them favor a 
measure like this ? According to Mr. Whiting, this system, to be com- 
plete, must include in its provisions all the abandoned lands, all lands for- 
feited for taxes, all confiscated lauds, all derelict personalty, all colored 
men free before the war in rebellious districts, and all fugitives thereto 
from loyal States, all legal proceedings of confiscation, all migrations of 
blacks to and from rebel States, all laws compensating masters for slaves, 
and all other matters relating to the colored people, whether bond or free. 
This is a new system. It opens a vast opportunity for corruption and 
abuse. It may be inaugurated in the name of humanity ; but I doubt, 
sir, if any Government, much less our Government of delegated powers, 
will ever succeed in the philanthropic line of business such as is contem- 
plated by this bill. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts appeals to us to forget the past, 
not to inquire how these poor people have become free, whether by law or 
by usurpation, but to look the gi-eat fact in the face " that three million 
slaves have become and are becoming free." Before I come to that great 
fact, let me first look to the Constitution. My oath to that is the highest 
humanity. By preserving the Constitution amidst the rack of war, in 
any vital part, we are saving for a better tune something of those liberties. 
State and personal, which have given so much happiness for over seventy 
years to so many millions ; and which, under a favorable Administration, 
might again restore contentment to our afflicted people. Hence the high- 
est humanity is in building strong the ramparts of constitutional restraint 
against such radical vxsurpations as is proposed to be inaugurated by 
measures kindred to this before the House. If the gentleman can show ' 
us warrant in the Constitution to establish this eleemosynaiy system for 
the blacks, and for making the Government a plantation speculator and 
overseer, and the Treasury a fund for the negro, I will then consider the 
cliaritable light in which he has commended his bill to our sympathies. It^ 
does not follow that because (as General Butler once said) there were as 
many poor in proportion to the people in the poorhouses of Massachusetts 
who were killed outright by bad treatment as were killed at the battle of 
Solferino in proportion (o those engaged, that we are to interfere by Fed- 
eral legislation for the victims of Massachusetts inhumanity. I would 
love to do something for the poor blacks who have been thrown houseless, 



856 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

clothesless, foodless, mediciueless, and friendless on the cold world by the 
improvident and barbarous philanthropy now in vogue ; but when my 
constituents ask me for my warrant thus to tax them, I wish to be able to 
point it out. / If you can so frame your bill as to draw no money from the 
Treasury, Tand make your scheme self-supporting ; or if you can so perfect 
the system as to connect it legally with the military without degi'ading the 
army, and still discipline and care for the unfortunate blacks, male and fe- 
male, old and young, strong and weak, then we may consider its propriety 
and legality with a view to aid its passage. 

We cannot and do not desire to ignore the fact that incalculable mis- 
ery has been and wiU be the fate of the freed negroes ; but it is another 
and a difficult problem to reconcile the aid they require from the benevolent 
with our oaths and well-matured judgments as to the province of the 
Federal Goverament over matters like this. The gentleman refers us for 
the constitutionality of this measure to the war power, the same power 
by which he justifies the emancipation proclamation and similar measures. 
We upon this side are thoroughly convinced of the utter sophistry of such 
reasoning. If the proclamation be unconstitutional, how can this or any 
measure based on it be valid? The gentleman says, "If the President 
had the power to free the slave, does it not imply the power to take care 
of him when freed ? " Yes, no doubt. If he had any power under the 
war power, he has aU power. He is so utterly irresponsible that even 
Congress cannot share his monarchical despotism. Under the Avar power 
he is a tyrant without a clinch on his revolutions. He can spin in any 
orbit he likes, as far and as long as he pleases. He refers us also to that 
clause of the Constitution which authorizes Congress " to declare war and 
make rules concerning captures on land." This latter argument squares 
with the theory of this war announced by the gentleman from Pennsylva- 
nia [Mr. Stevens], for the authority of Congress to declare war is of 
course only meant as against foreign nations, and Congress can make all 
rules concerning captures in stick a loar. But unless the gentlemen on 
the other side are ready to acknowledge the independence of the South, 
and recognize them as a separate nation of belHgerents, then his argument 
proves nothing in behalf of this biU, except that he is a theoretical seces- 
sionist. . The constitutional argiunent in favor of this bill is one that this 
side cannot recognize, unless we are prepared to unsay and undo all that 
we have said and done to protect the Constitution since the abolition 
measures began to take the form of law. 

" But," it is urged, " something must be done for the poor blacks. 
They are perishing by thousands. We must look the great fact of anti- 
slavery and its millions of enfranchised victims in the face, and legislate 
for their relief." Such is the appeal to our kindlier natures. Something 
should be done. The humanity which so long pitied the plumage should 
not forget the dying bird. But what can be done without violating the Con- 
stitution of tlie United States, or without intrenching upon a domain never 
granted by the States or the people in their written charter of powers? 
What can be done ? Oh ! ye honey-tongued humanitarians of New Eng- 
land, with your coffers filled from the "rough hand of Western toil, the 
beaded sweat of whose industry by the subtle alchemy of your inventive 
genius is transmuted into the jewels of your parvenu and shoddy splendor, 



CIVIL WAR. 357 

with your dividends rising higher and higher like waves under this storm 
of war ; I would beseecli you to go into the camps of the contrabands, 
as the gentleman described them, who are starving and pining for their 
old homes, and lift them ont of the mire into which your improvident and 
premature schemes have dragged tbem, pour the oil of healing into their 
wounds, and save a few of them at least from the doom of extirpation. 
Here is a fitting and legal opportunity for the exercise of a gracious Im- 
mauity. I rejoice to know that many good men, even from New England, 
have embraced it. 

But the gentleman urges this legislation, because, if it be not passed, 
the President's proclamation will be made " a living lie." He thinks that 
" neither the considerate judgment of mankind nor the gracious favor of \ 
Gfid-can be invoked upon the President's act of freedom, unless the law ' 
shall protect the freedom which the sword has declared." Not merely has 
the President's proclamation been made a living lie, but the thousands of 
corpses daily hurried out of the contraband hovels and tents along the Mis- 
sissippi prove it to have been a deadly lie. Neither the judgment of man 
nor the favor of God can be invoked without mockery upon a fanatical 
project so fraught with misery to the weak and with wholesale slaughter 
to its deluded victims. , 

But we are warned to look the great fact in the face that millions un- 
fit for freedom are yet to become free. I know, Mr. Speaker, that we 
cannot change the fact by closing our eyes. It is true. The revolution 
roUs on. No eiFort on the part of the Democracy to achieve a peace 
through conciliation will now be listened to. The spirit of those in pow- 
er is the spirit of extermination. The war with its revolutions goes on, 
and slaveiy as a poUtical if not as a social institution will fall under its 
crushing car. It may be that all of the four million slaves will be thrown, 
like the one hundred thousand already freed, upon the frigid charities of the 
world. But, sir, if slavery be doomed, so, alas ! is the slave. No scheme 
like this bill can save him. The Indian reserves, treaties, bounties, and 
agencies did not and does not save the red man. No Government farm- 
ing system, no charitable black scheme, can wash out the color of the 
negro, change his inferior nature, or save him from his inevitable fate. 
The irrepressible conflict is not between slavery and freedom, but between 
black and white ; and as De Tocqueville prophesied, the black will perish. 
Do gentlemen on the other side rely upon the nev»^ system, called by the 
transcendental abolitionists " Miscegenation" to save the black? This is 
but another name for amalgamation; but it will not save the negro. 
True, Wendell Phillips says it is " God's own method of crushing out the 
hatred of race, and of civilizing and elevating the world ; " and Theodore 
Tilton, the echtor of the "•Independent" (a paper publishing the laws of 
the United States by authority), holds that hereafter the '• negro will lose 
his typical blackness and be found clad in white men's skins." But, sir, 
no system so repugnant to the nature of our race — and to organize which 
doubtless the next Congress of Progressives, and perhaps the gentleman 
from Massachusetts, wiU practically provide — can save the negro. 

Mr. Eliot. I have no doubt that my friend understands all about it. 

Mr. Cox. I understand all about it, for I have the doctrines laid 



358 EIGHT YEAE8 IN CONGKESS. 

down in circulars, pamphlets, and books published bj your anti-slavery 
people. But it was not my intention to discuss it now upon this bill. 

Mr. Price. If all the blacks are crushed out, how is amalgamation 
to ruin the country? 

Mr. Cox. They will all run, according to the new gospel of abolition, 
into the white people, on that side of the House, I suppose. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Eliot. Is that what the gentleman is afraid of ? 

Mr. Cox. No, sir, for I do not believe that the doctrine of miscege- 
nation, or the amalgamation of the white and black, now strenuously 
urged by the abolition leaders, will save the negro. It will destroy him 
utterly. The physiologist will tell the gentleman that the mulatto does 
not live ; he does not recreate his kind ; he is a monster. Such hybrid 
races, by a law of Providence, scarcely survive beyond one generation. I 
promise the gentleman, at some future and appropriate time, when better 
prepared to develop that idea of miscegenation as now heralded by the 
Abolitionists, who are ip the van of the Republican movement — 

Mr. Eliot. I hope that the gentleman will go into it. 

Mr. Cox. If such be the desire of the gentleman I will attempt it, 
though reluctantly ; for my materials, like the doctrine, are a little 
" mixed." , 

Mr. Grinnell rose. » 

Mr. Cox. I cannot yield to the gentleman. I want none of his im- 
pertinences in my speech. The other day, when I was speaking, he in- 
terrupted me with them without my consent. I do not recognize him as 
a member to whom I owe the courtesy of my attention. But since I 
am challenged to exhibit this doctrine of the Abolitionists — called after 
some Latin words — miscegenation — to mingle and generate — I call your 
attention first to a circular I hold in my hand. It was circulated at the 
Cooper Institute the other night, when a female who, in the presence of 
the President, Vice-President, and you, Mr. Speaker, and your associates 
in this Hall, made the same saucy speech for abolition which she ad- 
dressed to the people of New York. It begins with the following signifi- 
cant quotation from Shakespeare : 

" The elements 
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up 
And say to the world, ' This was a man ! ' " [Laughter.] 

" Miscegenation ; the Theory of the Blending of the Races, appUed to the American 
White Man and Negro. Among the subjects treated of are: 

" 1. The Mixture of Caucasian and African Blood Essential to American Progi-ess. 
[Laughter.] 

" 2. IIow the American may become Comely. [Laughter.] 

" 3. The Type Man a Miscegen — The Sphinx lliddle Solved. 

" 4. The Irish and Negro lirst to Commingle. [Laughter.] 

" 5. Heart Histories of the Daughters of the South. 

" 6. Misccgenetic Ideal of Beauty in Woman. 

" 7. The Future— No White— No Black." 

If gentlemen doubt the authenticity of this new movement, let them go 
to the oflice of publication, 113 Nassau street. New York, and purchase. 
The movement is an ad\auce upon the doctrine of the gentlemen opposite, 
but they will soon work up to it. Tiie more philosophical and apostolic 



CIVIL WAR. 359 

of the abolition fraternity have fully decided upon the adoption of this 
amalgamation platform. I am informed that the doctrines are already 
indorsed by such lights as Parker Pillsbury, Lucretia Mott, Albert Bris- 
bane, William Wells Brown, Dr. McCune Smith (half and half — miscc- 
gen), Angelina Grimke, Theodore D. Weld and wile, and others. These 
whom I have named are only carrying out, with more audacity, the doc- 
trines of those who are now honored by the Republican party. I select 
a Southern and a Northern light. Cassias M. Clay, minister to Russia, 
has said that 

" Our Legislatures, State and Federal, should raise the platform upon which our free 
colored people stand ; they should give to them full political rights to hold office, to vote, 
to sit on juries, to give their testimony, and to make no distinction between them and 
om-selves." 

Gen. N. P. Banks, when a member of Congress, gave utterance to 
the following : 

" So far as he had studied the subject of races, he had adopted the idea that when 
there is a weaker race in existence it will succumb to, and be absorbed in, the stronger 
race. This was the imiversal law as regarded the races of men in the world. In regard 
to the question whether the white or the black race was superior, he proposed to wait 
until time should develop whether the white race should absorb the black, or the 

BLACK ABSORB THE WHITE." 

But even these are inferior lights compared wnth the advanced guard 
of this abolition army. When I name Theodore Tilton, an editor of the 
Government paper in Brooklyn, called the " Independent ; " when I recall 
the fact that the polished apostle of abolition, Wendell Phillips, whose 
golden-lipped eloquence can make miscegenation as attractive to the ear 
as it is to the other senses ; when I quote from the New York " Tribune," 
the centre and circumference of the abolition movement, and Mrs. Stowe, 
whose wu'itings have almost redeemed by their genius the hate and discord 
which they aided to create ; when I shall have done all this, I am sure 
the Progressives on the other side will begin to prick up their ears and 
study the new science of miscegenation with a view to its practical realiza- 
tion by a bureau. [Laughter.] 

First hear the testimony of Wendell Phillips. He says : 

"Now, I am going to say something that I know will make the New York ' Herald ' use 
its small capitals and notes of admiration, and yet no well-informed man this side of China 
but believes it in the very core of his heart. That is, ' amalgamation,' a word that the 
Northern apologist for slavery has always used so glibly, but which you never heard from 
a Southerner. Amalgamation ! Remember this, the youngest of you, that on the 4th 
day of July, 1863, you heard a man say that in the light of all history, in virtue of every 
page he ever read, he w^s an amalgamationist to the utmost extent. I have no hope for 
the future, as this country has no past, and Europe has no past, but in that sublime min- 
gling of races which is God's own method of civilizing and elevating the world. God, by 
the events of His providence, is crushing out the hatred of race which has crippled this 
country until to-day." 

I put it to gentlemen on the other side. Are you responsible for him? 
Ah ! you received him, how ardently, in this city and Capitol last year. 

Mr. J]liot. To whom does the gentleman refer? 

Mr. Cox. Wendell Philhps. The Senate doors flew open for him ; the 
Vice-President of the United States welcolmed him ; Senators flocked 
around him ; Representatives cheered his disunion utterances at the Smith- 



360 EIGHT YEAES EST C0NGEES8. 

sonian ; and you will follow him wherever he leads. He is a practical 
araalgamationist, and he is leading and will lead you up to the platform 
on which you will finally stand. You may seem coy and reluctant now, 
but so you were about the political equality of the negro a year ago ; so 
you were about abolishing slavery in the States two years ago. Now you 
are in the millennial glory of abolition. So it will be hereafter with amal- 
gamation ! Here is what Theodore Tilton, editor of the " Independent," 
says in the circular to which I have referred : 

" Have you not seen with your own eyes — no man can have escaped it — that the black 
race in this country is losing its typical blackness ? The Indian is dying out ; the negro 
is only changing color ! Men who, by and by, shall ask for the Indians, will be pointed to 
their graves : ' There lie their ashes ! ' Men who, by and by, shall ask for the negroes, will 
be told, ' There they go, clad in white men's skins.' A hundred years ago a mulatto was 
a curiosity ; now the mulattoes are half a million. You can yourself predict the future !" 

Mr. Eliot. The gentleman will permit me to say, that surely all this 
was under a state of slavery. 

Mr. Cox. I will show the gentleman directly that his friends and 
leaders propose to continue it in a state of freedom. It wUl be the freest 
kind of license. 

Mr. Eliot. The gentleman will allow me to suggest whether the dif- 
ficulty he labors under is not that the Democratic party is afraid the Re- 
publicans will get ahead of them. 

Mr. Cox. I am not afraid of any thing of the kind while white people 
remain upon which we can centre our aifections and philanthropy. You 
can take the whole monopoly of " miscegenation." We abhor and detest 
it. The circular referred to has other indorsements, which I quote before 
I reach that Warwick of Republicanism, Horace Greeley. The " Anti- 
Slavery Standard " of January 30 says : 

" This pamphlet comes directly and fearlessly to the advocacy of an idea of which the 
American people are more afraid than of any other. Assuredly God's laws will fulfil and 
vindicate themselves. It is in the highest degree improbable that He has placed a natural 
repugnance between any two families of His children. If He has done so, that decree 
will execute itself, and these two will never seek intimate companionship together. If, on 
the contrary. He has made no such barrier, no such one is needful or desirable, and every 
attempt to restrain these parties from exercising their natural choice is in contravention 
of His will, and is an unjust exercise of power. The future must decide how far black 
and white are disposed to seek each other in marriage. The probability is that there will 
be a progressive intermingling, and that the nation will be benefited by it." 

I hold in my hand the " Anglo- African," of January 23, which dis- 
cusses this subject from the purely African stand-point : 

" The author of the pamphlet before us advances beyond these lights of the days gone 
by. What they deemed a remote and undesirable probability, he regards as a present and 
pressing necessity ; what they deemed to be an evil to be legislated against, he regards as 
a blessing which should be hastened by all the legislative and pohtical organizations in the 
land ! Tlie word — nay, the deed — miscegenation, the same in substance with the word 
amalgamation, the terror of our aboHtion friends twenty years ago, and of many of them 
to-day — miscegenation, which means intermarriages between whites and blacks — ' misce- 
genation,' which means the absolute practical brotherhood or social intermingling of blacks 
and whites, he would have inscribed on the banner of the Republican party, and held up 
as the watchword of the next Presidential platform. Wc take a deep interest in the doc- 
trine shadowed forth, that to improve a given race of men it is too late to begin with 
infint and Sunday schooling ; at birth they have the bent of their parents, which we may 
elightly alter but cannot radically change. The education and improvement should begin 



crviL WAE. 361 

with the marriage of parties who, instead of strong resemblances, should have contrasts 
which are complementary each of the other. It is disgraceful to our modern civilizatioa 
that we have societies for improving the breed of sheep, horses, and pigs, while the human 
race is left to grow up without scientific culture." 

The editor of the " Anglo-African" confesses that he is a little staggered 
in his theories by what he calls the evident deterioration of the mixed 
bloods of Central America, but he finds the solution of the difficulty in the 
fact that the races there mixed, Indian and Spanish, are not complemen- 
tary of each other. This, to my observation, Mr. Speaker, is as absurd 
as it is untrue. But I am not now arguing the reasonableness of this doc- 
trine of mixed races. I only propose to show what it is, and whither it is 
tending. 

The New York " Tribune," the great organ of the dominant party, is not 
so frank as the " Anglo-African," but its exposition of " miscegenation " is 
one of the signs which point to the Republican solution of our African 
troubles by the amalgamation of the races. In indorsing the doc- 
trine of the pamphlet, Mr. Greeley holds that — 

" No statesman in his senses cares to put morsels of cuticle under a microscope before 
he determines upon the prudence of a particular poUcy. Diverdfi^ of race is the condition 
precedent in America, and their assimilation is the problem. High skulls, broad skulls, 
long skulls, black hair, red hair, yellow hair, copper skins or olive skins, Caucasians, 
Ethiopians, Mongolians, Americans, Malays, with oval pelvis, round pelvis, square pelvis, 
or oblong pelvis, we have or may have them all in our population ; and our business is to 
accommodate all by subjecting merely material fliffereuces to the ameliorating influence of 
an honest and unlimited recognition of one common nature." 

To " assimilate these various races " is the problem which Mr. Greeley 
approaches. AVe cannot but admire the delicate phraseology in which 
his approaches are couched. Not so the pamphlet to which I referred. 
It is bold and outspoken. It advocates a preference of the black over the 
white as partners. The following are the points inculcated by its author : 

" 1. Since the whole human race is of one family, there should be in a republic no dis- 
tinction in political or social rights on account of color, race, or nativity. 

" 2. The doctrine of human brotherhood implies the right of white and black to inter- 
marry. 

" 3. The solution of the negro problem will not be reached in this country until public 
opinion sanctions a union of the two races. 

" 4. As the negro is here, and cannot be driven out, there should be no impediment to 
the absorption of one race in the other. 

" 5. Legitimate unions between whites and blacks could not possibly have any worse 
effect than the illegitimate unions which have been going on more than a century at the 
South. 

" 6. The mingling of diverse races is proved by all history to have been a positive 
benefit to the progeny. 

" 7. The Southern rebellion is caused less by slavery than by the base prejudice result- 
ing from distinction of color ; and perfect peace can come only by a cessation of that dis- 
tinction through an absorption of the black race by the white. 

" 8. It is the duty of anti-slavery men everywhere to advocate the mingling of the two 
races. 

" 9. The next Presidential election should secure to the blacks all their social and po- 
litical rights ; and the progressive party should not flinch from conclusions fairly deducible 
from their own principles. 

"10. In the millennial future the highest type of manhood will not be white or black, 
but brown ; and the union of black with white in marriage will help the human family 
the sooner to realize its great destiny." 



362 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

The author finds an emblem of his success in the blending of many to 
make the one new race, in the crowning of the dome above this Capitol 
•with the bronze statue of Liberty ! It is neither black nor white, but the 
intermediate miscegen, typifying the exquisite composite race Avhich is to 
arise out of this war for abolition, and whose destiny it is to rule the con- 
tinent ! Well might the correspondent of the New York " Tribune," in de- 
scribing the lifting of the uncouth masses, and bolting them together joint I 
by joint, till they blended into the majestic "Freedom" which lifts her 
head in the blue sky above us, regard the scene as prophetic of the time { 
when the reconstructed symbol of freedom in America shall be a colored 
goddess of liberty ! But to the pamphlet itself. Here we have it. This 
new evangel for the redemption of the black and white, upon its introduc- 
tory page begins as follows : 

" The word is spoken at last. It is miscegenation — the blending of the various races 
of men — the praHcal recognition of the brotherhood of all the children of the common 
Father." [Laughter.] 

Just what our miscegenetic Chaplain prays for here almost every 
morning ; and you all voted for him, even come of my friends from the 
border States. The " Introduction " proceeds : 

" While the sublime inspiration of Christianity has taught this doctrine, Christians 
so-called have ignored it in denying social equality to the colored man ; while democracy 
is founded upon the idea that all men are equal, Democrats have shrunk from the logic of 
their own creed and refused to fraternize with the people of all nations ; while science has 
demonstrated that the intermarriage of diverse races is indispensable to a progressive hu- 
manity, its votaries, in this coimtry at least, have never had the courage to apply that rule 
to the relations of the white and colored races. But Christianity, democracy, and science 
are stronger than the timidity, prejudice, and pride of short-sighted men, and they teach 
that a people, to become great, must be composite. This involves what is vulgarly known 
as amalgamation" [laughter], " and those who dread that name, and the thought and 
fact it implies, are warned against reading these pages." 

There are some remarkable things thrown out in this pamphlet, which 
should be examined by gentlemen upon the other side. The author dis- 
cusses the effect of temperature on color. Quoting from a German natu- 
ralist, he holds — 

" That the true skin is perfectly white ; that over it is placed another membrane, called 
the reticular tissue, and that this is the membrane that is black ; and, finally, that it is 
covered by a third membrane, the scarf skin, which has been compared to a tine varnish 
lightly extended over the colored membrane, and designed to protect it. Examine also 
this piece of skin belonging to a very fair person. You perceive over the true white skin 
a membrane of a slightly brownish tint, and over that again, but quite distinct from it, a 
transparent membrane. In other words, it clearly appears that the whites and the cop- 
per-colored have a colored membrane which is placed under the scarf skin and immediately 
above the true skin, just as it is in the negro. The infant negroes areborn irhite, or rather 
reddish, like those of other jicople " [laughter], '' hut in two or three days the color begins 
to change ; they speedily become copptr-colorcd'''' [laughter], '■'■and by the seventh or eighth 
day, though never exposed to the sun, they appear quite black." [Laughter.] " Ue men- 
tions that it is known that negroes in some instances are born quite white or are true Al- 
bhios ; sometimes, after being black for many years, they become piebald, or wholly 
white, without their general health suffering under the change. He also mentions another 
metamorphosis, which would not be agreeable to the prejudices of many among us ; it is 
that of the white becoming piebald with black as deep as ebony." 

That is an argument to show that we aU, black and white, start off in 



CIVIL WAK. 363 

the race of life nearly of the same color, and that we ought to come to it 
again by the processes of — miscegenation ! 

The author, in his second chapter, devotes many pages to considering 
the superiority of mixed races. Without combating his facts or deduc- 
tions, let me quote this grand conclusion : 

" Whatever of power and vitality there is in the American race is derived, not from its 
Anglo-Saxon progenitors, but from all the different nationalities which go to make up this 
people. AH that is needed to make us the iinest race on earth is to ingraft upon our 
stock the negro element which Providence has placed by our side on this continent." 
[Laughter.] " Of all the rich treasures of blood vouchsafed to us, that of the negro is 
the most precious " [laughter], "because it is the most unlike any other that enters into 
the composition of our national life." [Laughter.] 

" It is clear that no race can long endure without a commingling of its blood with that 
of other races. The condition of all human progress is miscegenation." [Laughter.] 
" The Anglo-Saxon should learn this in time for his own salvation. If we will not heed 
the demands of justice, let us at least respect the law of self-preservation. Providence 
has kindly placed on the American soil, for His own wise purposes, four million colored 
people. They are our brothers, our sisters." [Laughter.] " By minghng with them we 
become powerful, prosperous, and progressive ; by refusing to do so we become feeble, 
unhealthy, narrow-minded, unfit for the nobler offices of freedom, and certain of early 
decay." [Laughter.] 

I call the especial attention of my friend from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Eliot] to these points, with a view to their incorporation in his bureau 
for freedmen and freedwomen. All your efforts will be vaia, and you will 
not be able to maintain a healthy vitality, if you do not mix your whites 
very freely with your black beneficiaries. The writer gives us his theory 
of the war. Although the war has not quite reached the miscegenetic 
point yet, it progressses visibly. After showing how other wars have 
blended the various bloods of the world, he says : 

" It will be our noble prerogative to set the example of this rich blending of blood. 
It is idle to maintain that this present war is not a war for the negro. It is a war for the 
negro. Not simply for his personal rights or his physical freedom ; it is a war, if you 
please, of amalgamation, so called — a war looking, as its final fruit, to the blending of the 
white and black. All attempts to end it without a recognition of the political, civil, and 
social rights of the negro will only lead to still bloodier battles in the future. Let us be wise 
and look to the end. Let the war go on until the piiJe of caste is done away. Let it go 
on until church, and State, and society recognize not only the propriety but the necessity 
of the fusion of the white and black " [laughter] ; " in short, until the great truth shall 
be declared in our public documents and announced in the messages of our Presidents, 
that it is desirable the wliite man should marry the black woman and the white woman 
the black man — that the race should become melaleuketic before it becomes miscege- 
netic." [Great laughter.] 

This is the language of scientific progress, soon to become familiar to 
the gentlemen on the other side. The author proceeds : ^ 

" The next step will be the opening of California to the teeming millions of Eastern Asia. 
The patience, the industry, the ingenuity, the organizing power, the skill in the mechanic 
arts wliich characterize the Japanese and Chinese must be transplanted to our soil, not 
merely by the emigration of the ichabitants of those nations, but by their incorporation with 
the composite race which will hereafter rule this continent. It must bo remembered that 
the Indians whom we have displaced were copper-colored ; and no other complexion, phys- 
iologists affirm, can exist permanently in America. The white race which settled in New 
England will be unable to maintain its vitality as a blonde people. The darker shades of 
color live and thrive, and the consumption so prevalent in our Eastern States is mainly 
confined to the yellow-haired and thin-blooded blondes." 

What a sad picture this for our New England friends ! Oh, ye yel- 



y 



364 ETGHT YEARS m CONGEESS. 

low-haired and tliin-blooded Yankees ! Mingle ! mingle ! mingle while* 
ye may ! It is the sure cure for your asthmas and consumptions. StiU 1 
speaking of these thin-blooded New Englanders, he says : 

" They need the intermingling of the rich tropic temperament of the negro to give 
warmth and fulness to their natures." [Laughter.] " They feel the yearning, and do 
not know how to interpret it." [Laughter.] " The physician tells them they must travel 
to a warmer climate. They recognize in this a gUmpse of the want they feel, though they 
are hopeless of its efiScacy to fully restore the lost vitality. Still they feel the nameless 
longmg. 

" ' Tet waft me from the harbor mouth, 
\ ^ Wild wind ! I seek a warmer sky, 

And I will see before I die 
The palms and temples of the South.' 

" It is only by the infusion into their very system of the vital forces of a tropic race 
that they may regain health and strength. We must accept the facts of nature. We 
must become a yellow-skinned, black-haired people — in fine, we must become miscegens 
if we would attain the fullest results of civihzation." [Laughter.] 

This enthusiastic theorist then shows that all religions are derived 
from the dark races. He calls to us from the tombs of Egypt, and solves 
the Sphinx riddle of our national destiny. That solution is this : that " if 
we would fill our proper places in nature, we must mingle our blood with 
all the children of the common father of humanity." Thus and thus only 
can we hope for redemption by a pure religion. The cold skepticism of 
the Caucasian will then be expunged in the more genial faith which mis- 
cegenation will produce. Hear him : 

" May we not hope that in the happier hereafter of this continent, when the Mongo- 
lian from China and Japan, and the negro from his own Africa, shall have blent their 
more emotional natures with ours, that here may be witnessed at once the most perfect 
religion as well as the most perfect type of mankind the world has yet seen ? Let us 
then embrace our black brother" [laughter] ; "let us give him the intellect, the energy, 
the nervous endurance of the cold North which he needs, and let us take from him his 
emotional power, his love of the spiritual, his delight in the wonders which we understand 
only through faith. In the beautiful words of Emerson ; 

" ' He has the avenues of God 

Hid from man of northern brain, 
Far beholding, without cloud. 

What these with slowest steps attain.' " 

The writer then goes on to show what this miscegen will become phys- 
iologically. He will be the realization of the ideal, not of the Avhite or 
of the black race, but the perfect ideal of the blended races ! The artist 
is called in to adorn by the rarest touches of the facile pencil this produc- 
tion of advanced abolitionism : 

" The ideal or type of man of the future will blend in himself all that is passionate 
and emotional in the darker races, all that is imaginative and spiritual in the Asiatic races, 
and all that is intellectual and perceptive in the white races. He will also be composite 
as regards color. The purest miscegen will be brown, with reddish cheeks, curly and 
waving hair, dark eyes, and a fulness and suppleness of form not now dreamed of by 
any individual people. Adam, the progenitor of the race, as his very name sigr.ifies, was 
made of red earth ; and, like the inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia, muyt have been 
of a tawny or yellow color. The extreme white and black are departures from the original 
type. The Saviour is represented very falsely in paintings as being light-haired and white- 
skinned, wlien, in truth, he must have been a man of very dark complexion, as were all 
the Palestine Jews. Thcv were a tawny or yellow race. The fact has been noticed that 



CIVIL WAK. 365' 

the Amharic, the language of the Abyssinian, is remarkably analogous to the Hebrew, 
^ rendering it probable that the Jews were partly of Abyssinian or negro origin." 

The writer makes the same mistake which others have made in con- 
founding (he Abyssinian with our Congo negro. They are utterly unlike 
in form and feature, as well as in mind and character. ' The author's elo- 
quence is better than his science ; for Avith what enthusiasm does he close 
his appeal to the members of the abolition party : 

" We urge upon white men and women no longer to glory in their color ; it is no evi- 
dence of cultivation or of purity of blood. Adam and Christ, tlie type men of the world's 
great eras, were red or yellow, and to men of this color, above all otliers, must be commu- 
nicated the higher inspirations which involve great spiritual truths, and which bring indi- 
viduals of the human family into direct communion with supernatural agencies." 

These theories, which seem so novel to us, have been a part of the 
gospel of abolition for years. The celebrated authoress of Uncle Tom's 
Cabin has made a pen-portrait of a miscegenetic woman and man in her 
novel called Dred. She makes them the central figures in her graphic 
scenes of Southern life. Harry, the quadroon overseer, and Lisette, his 
wife, are described as of that " mixed blood which seems so peculiarly fit- 
ted to appreciate all the finer aspects of conventional life." Harry's 
power was such, owing to the constitution inherited from his father, tem- 
pered by the soft and genial temperament of the beautiful Eboe mulattress 
who was his mother, that, through fear or friendship, upon the plantation 
there was universal subordination to him. Lisette is described as a deli- 
cate, airy little creature, formed by a mixture of the African and French 
blood, producing one of those fanciful, exotic combinations that give the 
same impression of brilliancy and richness that one receives from tropical 
insects and flowers ! Her eyes have the hazy, dreamy languor which is 
so characteristic of the mixed races. "With such sensuous portraiture as 
his original, the author I am considering finds all the characteristics of 
perfect ideal beauty in the — negro girl ! He copies them with fidelity, if 
he does not surpass the original. I call the attention of gentlemen upon 
the other side to this remarkable picture, for they will find its living 
counterpart only in the crazed brains of their fanatic supporters : 

" In what does beauty consist ? In richness and brightness of color, and in graceful- 
ness of curve and outline. What does the Anglo-!*axon, who assumes that his race mo- 
nopolizes the beauty of the earth, look for in a lovely woman ? Her cheeks must be 
rounded and have a tiut of the sun, her lips must be pouting, her teeth white and regu- 
lar, her eyes large and bright ; her hair must curl about her head, or descend in crinkling 
waves ; she must be merry, gay, full of poetry and sentiment, fond of song, childlike, and 
artless. But all these characteristics belong, in a somewhat exaggerated degree, to the 
negro girl. What color is beautiful in the human face ? It is the blank white. In paint- 
ings, the artist has never portrayed so perfect a woman to the fancy as when, choosing his 
subject from some other than the Caucasian race, he has been able to introduce the mar- 
vellous charm of the combination of colors in her face. Not alone to the white face, even 
when tinted with mantling blood, is the fu,scination of female loveliness imputed. The 
author may state — and the same experience can be witnessed to by thousands — that the 
most beautiful girl in form, feature, and every attribute of feminine loveliness he ever saw 
was a mulatto. By crossing and improvement of different varieties, the strawberry, or 
other garden fruit, is brought nearest to perfection, in sweetness, size, and fruitfulness. 
This was a ripe and complete woman, possessing the best elements of two sources of pa- 
rentage. Her complexion was waiTQ and dark, and golden with the heat of tropical 
suns, lips full and luscious, cheeks perfectly moulded and tinged with deep crimson, hair 
curling, and 



t 



EU 



366 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

" ' Whose glossy black 
To shame might bring 
The plumage of the raven's wing.' " 

This pampleteer is a thorough philosopher. He holds that the slave- i^, 
holders South are a superior race, owing to their intimate communication 
from birth to death with the colored race. Their emotional power, fervid 
oratory, aad intensity of thought and will, are attributed to this associ- 
ation. Their ability to cope with the North in battle is found to consistlBnl 
in the fact that the presence of Africans in their midst in large numbers: f 
infuses into the air a sort of barbaric malaria ; a miasm of fierceness, 
which after long intei'course between the races comes to infect the white 
men and even the women also ! I would fail in my promise to elucidate 
this new creed of abolition, did I not call attention to the argument which 
the writer draws from the fact that contraries like each other, and that the 
blonde incontinently falls in love with the black ! From this principle of 
aesthetics or lust the author deduces his highest type of beauty. From 
this source of opposite yet mingling emotions he thinks that civilization 
will be enhanced and glorified ! I give his deductions as Avell for their 
novelty as for his felicity in choosing the names by which he illustrates 
them. Let me again quote ; 

" Such of our readers as have attended anti-sl.ivery meetings will have observed the 
large proportion of blondes in the assemblage. This peculiarity is also noticeable in the ! " 
leading speakers and agitators in the great anti-slavery party. Mr. Horace Greeley, of the 
New York ' Tribune,' known for his devotion to the negro rac2, is as opposite as a man pos- 
sibly can be to the people to whom he has shown his attachment by long and earnest labor 
for their welfare. In color, complexion, structure, mental habits, peculiarities of all kinds, 
they are as far apart as the poles. The same is true of Mr. Wendell Philhps. He, too, la 
the very opposite of the negro. His complexion is reddish and sanguine ; his hair, in 
younger days, was light ; he is, in short, one of the sharpest possible contrasts to the 
pure negro. Mr. Theodore Tilton, the eloquent young editor of the ' Independent,' who has 
alveady achieved immortality by advocating enthusiastically the doctrine of miscegena- 
tion" [laugliter], " is a very pure specimen of the blonde, and when a young man was 
noted for his angelic type of feature" [laughter] — " we mean angelic after the type of 
Raphael, which is not the true angelic feature, because the perfect type of the future will 
be that of the blended race, with the sunny hues of the South tinging the colorless com- 
plexion of the icy North. But it is needless further to particularize. The sympathy Mr. 
Greeley, Mr. Phillips, and Mr. Tilton feel for the negro is the love which the blonde bear 
for the black : it is a love of race, a sympathy stronger to them than the love they bear 
to woman. It is founded upon natural law. We love our opposites. Nor is it alone true 
that the blonde love the black. The black also love their opposites. Said Frederick 
Douglass, a noble specimen of the melaleuketic American" [laughter], " in one of his 
speeches : ' We love the white man, and will remain with him. We like him too well to 
leave him, but we must possess with him the rights of freedom.' Our police courts give 
painful evidence that the passion of the colored race for the white is often so uncontrolla- 
ble as to overcome the terror of the law. It has been so, too, upon the Southern planta- 
tions. The only remedy for this is legitimate melaleuketic marriage." [Laughter.] 

The revelations at Hilton Head and along the Carolina coast might 
have been added to the illustrations above to show the irrepressible aft'ec- 
tion between white Avomen and black men and black women and white 
men. But on that — I forbear. 

Sir, I cannot pursue this style of remark further. The contemplation 
of such disgusting theories is not pleasant. I have been challenged to go 
into it by my friend from Masaachusetts. This is my apology. The 
gentlemen on the other side may be unconscious of the path they are trav- 



crvTL wAK. 367 

elling under the lead of these amalgamationists. But they must follow. 
They may protest, but we know that they will yield, for they have ever 
yielded to their extreme men. As this very writer himself truly says (p. 
58): 

" As the war has progressed, men's minds have been opened more and more to the 
true cause of our country's difficulties. Human nature is imperfect ; it can ordinarily 
take in only half or quarter truths. It was a great step in the advance when the country 
willingly accepted the truth that all men should be free. But it might not have been seen 
by many that further along in the path of progress we should recognize the great doctrine 
of human brotherhood, and that human brotherhood comprehended not merely the per- 
sonal fieedom, but the acknowledgment of the political and social rights of the negro, 
and the provision for his entrance into those family relations which form the dearest and 
strongest ties that bind humanity together. Once place the races upon a footing of per- 
fect equality, and these results will surely follow. 

" Let it be understood, then, that equality before the law, for the negro, secures to 
him freedom, privilege to secure property and public position, and, above all, carries with 
it the ultimate fnsiori of the negro and ivhite races. When this shall be accomplished by 
the inevitable influences of time, all the troubles that loom up now in the future of our 
country will have passed away. It is the true solution of our difficulties, and he is blind 
who does not see it. The President of the United States, fortunately for the country, has 
made a great advance in the right direction. His first thought in connection with the 
enfranchisement of the slaves was to send them from the country. He discovered, first, 
that this was physically impossible, and, second, that the labor alone which would be lost 
to America and the world would amount in value to more than the debts of all the na- 
tions of the earth. The negro is rooted on this continent ; we cannot remove hun ; we 
must not hold him in bondage. The wisest course is to give him his rights, and let him 
alone ; and by the certain influence of our institutions he will become a component ele- 
ment of the American man." 

Gentlemen of the other side have here laid down for them the shining 
pathway that will lead them out of the troubles with which their ill-judged 
emancipation schemes have environed them. Whether they will follow 
it, time will show. Events will show whether the American people will 
not have a thorough and honest white man's disgust for all these African 
policies, culminating, as they must, in amalgamation, so as in time to re- 
verse the wheel of revolution, and thus save both races — the one from con- 
tinued slaughter, and the other from eventual and certain extermination. 
I have quoted these extracts to show that there is a doctrine now being 
advertised and urged by the leading lights of the Abolition party, toward 
which the Republican party will and must advance. See how they have 
advanced for the last two or three years ! They used to deny, whenever 
it was charged, that they favored black citizenship ; yet now they are 
favoring free black suffrage in the District of Columbia, and will favor it 
wherever in the South they need it for their purposes. The Attorney- 
General of the United States has declared the African to be an American 
citizen. The Secretary of State grants him a passport as such. The 
President of the United States calls him an American citizen of African 
descent. The Senate of the United States is discussing African equality 
in street cars. We have the negro at every moment and in every bill in 
Congress. All these things, in connection with the African policies of 
confiscation and emancipation in their various shapes for the past three 
years, culminating in this grand plunder scheme of a department for freed- 
men, ought to convince us that that party is moving steadily forward to 



368 EIGHT TEAJBS EST CONGRESS. 

perfect social eqimHty of black and white, and can only end in this detest- 
able doctrine of^ — Miscegenation ! 

Gentlemen may deny that this is the tendency of their party. They 
used to deny that they favored the doctrine of the political equality of 
black and white, which was once charged upon them, and which they are 
now so boldly consummating. The truth will appear. ' After a year or 
two some member from New England will come here recognizing the 
great fact that four million blacks are mixing more or less, and ought to 
mix more, with the whites of the country, and will advocate a bureau of 
another kind — a department for the hybrids who are cast upon the care 
of the Government by this system of miscegenation. ) 

Mr. Speaker, since I have been upon the floor, the gentleman from( 
Massachusetts more than hinted that the Democracy might desire to com- ■ 
pete with his party in this new scheme of miscegenation. Not at all, sir. . 
Our prejudices are strong, but they are in favor of our own color. We 
have, in times past, alRliated with the Democracy South, but I do not 
understand that the Democratic party North is responsible for what the 
Democratic party South did since or when they separated from us, or 
since and when they divided onr party and helped you to divide the Union. 
The Democratic party of the North never was a pro-slavery party, as has 
been libellously charged. [Laughter on the Republican side.] Oh, I 
know you laugh, gentlemen, at that ; but your laugh is " like the crack- 
ling of thorns under a pot." The Scripture teUs you what kind of laugh- 
ter that is. It would be unparliamentary to characterize it further. I 
repeat it, the Democracy North never Avas a pro-slavery party. I know 
the contrary has been reiterated by the crew who have floated on the sum- 
mer ciurent of Northern prejudice, until many good people believe it. A 
gi'osser falsehood was never uttered. Even Horace Greeley is ashamed 
any more to repeat it. He stated the other day our position correctly, 
when he said that " northern Democracy is not really pro-slavery, but 
anti-intervention ; maintaining, not that slavery is right, but that we of 
the free States should mind our own business and let alone other people's." 
Our platforms are but the repetition of this idea of non-interference. Be- 
ginning with 1840 and ending with 1860, we resolved — 

" That Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the 
domestic institutions of the several States ; and that such States are the sole and proper 
judges of every thing pertaining to their own affairs, not pi-ohibited by the Constitution; 
that all efforts by abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with ques- 
tions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, ai'e calculated to lead to 
the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevita- 
ble tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and 
permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our politi- 
cal institutions." 

The Democracy ever favored local sovereignty as to slavery and every 
other domestic matter. They would have extended that sovereignty, and 
not .slavery, from the States to the Territories. On that question of ex- 
tension, of non-intervention, the Democracy North and South unhappily 
divided. The consequences are upon us. 

I accept events as they transpire. Not responsible for them, yet not 
unobservant of them, I call the attention of the House to the bold strides 



CIVIL WAK. 369 

which have been made since "\ve last met, by fraud and force, to crush out 
the institution of slavery. I need not point you to the black recruiting 
system in Maryland and Missouri. I need not rehearse the orders of gen- 
erals and subordinates, all working to this end, regardless of the rights 
of property or local sovereignty. Slavery hangs precariously by a hair, 
in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, and Florida. 
Even in old Kentucky, where her loyal people cared less for it and more 
for their State right over it, anti-slavery is at work. Wherever in our 
lines slavery yet exists, it is comparatively free and altogether profitless. 
It works at its own will, and not at the will of the master. Outside of 
our lines — within the Gulf States — slaves once worth $2,000 are now 
only worth their $100 in gold ; and this depreciation will go on if our 
armies continue to penetrate the South. If it thus go on, where will it 
end ? In the grave of the slave ! Read the accounts of mortality among 
the blacks, especially those in the military. Each camp is a hospital. 
The deserted families perish by their removal from their homes, by vice 
and starvation. We of this side have no power to stop it. The war 
keeps it going. For this condition of the negro let the Abolition party 
and its savage counterpart South answer to God and the country. To 
the horrors and calamities of the whites growing out of this war are to be 
added the miseries and destruction of the blacks ; and this indictment of 
high crime will not be found against the northern Democracy, but against 
its revilers North, who divided our Union, and its enemies South, who 
divided our party. 

In the forthcoming election for Chief Magistrate you will find the 
Democracy making no issue about slavery. If it is dying or dead, as you 
allege, you will find them striving their utmost to preserve what they can 
of local and personal liberty out of the chaos of this conflict. We have 
been the champions of local and State liberty, not because slavery was 
guaranteed by it. No, sir. We have not championed slavery. We never 
placed it in our northern constitutions. I would fain have seen slavery 
die, if die it must, by the unforced action of the States, as it has died in 
the now free States, and not by the rough usages of war, which destroys 
the slave mth slavery ; not by usurpations upon the rights of the States 
and the people, Avhich destroy both freedom and slavery and slave, but by 
the sovereign intelligence of the people of the States, who alone are responsi- 
ble for the existence of their own domestic institutions. I am not insensible 
to the signs of the times. Judging by what we daily see here in this House, 
the border States, through the blandishments of power, the fear of ruin, the 
tyi'anny of the bayonet, and the corruption of gi-eenbacks, are, I think, grad- 
ually being j3e?-s«acZef? to yield before the genius of universal emancipation ! 
The music of the old Union is hushed in the bugles of war. The northern 
Democracy, in struggling to preserve the institutions of those States, and 
in doing which they have been and are yet in sympathy with their only 
proper representatives, have done so from no love of slavery ; but because, 
in the language of the Chicago platform, they would, by preserving State 
institutions, "" preserve the balance of power, on which the perfection and 
endurance of our political fabric depended." When the party in power, 
by edict and bayonet, by sham election and juggling proclamation, drag 
down slavery, they drag down in the spirit of ruthless iconoclasm the very 
24 



370 EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS. 

genius of our civil polity, local self-government. They strike constitutional! 
liberty in striking at domestic slavery. Hence they must abolish habeas 
corpus ■when they stab the hated institution. They must invade bills of 
ri"-ht -when they invade State rights. When next you meet us at the polls 
you shall answer for the perfection of our political fabric which you have 
marred, and the endurance of which you have imperilled. No more 
wrangling about pro-slavery or anti-slavery. The question shall be, the? 
old order with Democracy to administer it, or continued revolution withi 
destructives to guide it ; the old Union with as much of local sovereignty ' 
as may be saved from the abrasion of war, or a new abolition and mili- 
tary unity of territory, with debt, tyranny, and fanaticism as its trinity. 



HISTORIC LESSONS FOR CIVIL WAR. 

THE nation's hope AMNESTY SOUTHERN UNIONISTS PLAN OF THE PRESIDENT AND THE 

BILLS OF RECONSTRUCTION ONE-TENTH PLAN THE OATH PRESIDENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS 

^VITALITY OF STATE GOVERNMENTS RECONSTRUCTION CITIL WARS OF GREECE, ROME, 

FRANCE, AND ENGLAND, HOW RECONCILED — ^VICTORY WITHOUT REPRISALS. 

" We know of no great revolution which might not have been prevented by com- 
promise early and graciously made. Firmness is a great virtue in public affairs, but it 
has its proper sphere. Conspiracies and insurrections in which small minorities are en- 
gaged, the outbreakings of popular violence unconnected with any extensive project or 
any durable principle, are best repressed by vigor and decision. To shrink from them is 
to make them formidable. But no wise ruler will confound the pervading taint with the 
slight local isolation. The neglect of this distinction has been fatal even to governments 
strong in the power of the sword." — Macaulay, 

The bill of Hon. Henry "Winter Davis, " to guarantee to certain 
States, whose governments are usurped or overthrown, a Republican form 
of government," presented an opportunity to discuss the problenis of re- 
construction. 

Mr. Cox, on the 4th day of May, 1864, delivered the speech which 
follows. Mr. Davis answered the argument against the one-tenth policy 
in the suffrage of the new States, by abandoning it, and substituting the 
majority. 

Mr. Cox said : Mr. Speaker, my heart's desire and prayer to God is 
for peace and union to this distracted land. While urging undiminished 
and increased exertions by our army and navy to secure imion, I have been 
ever ready to heal the Avounds and check the ravages of war by all rational 
methods used among civilized nations. To those Avho can entertain but one 
idea at a time, this position has seemed inconsistent ; but to those who have 
read history, it will appear that war is made for peace, and that to con- 
summate peace in the midst of war, and to restore harmony in civil or 
international conflict, negotiation and friendliness are indispensable. 

During the long and anxious years I have served here — from almost 
a youth to almost middle age — I have nev«r failed to warn against the 



CIVIL WAU. S71 

great crisis of force which came in 1861. These auguries have been un- 
happily too fully fulfilled. What could be done by an humble represen- 
tative to avert this strife, that I did. My constituents know this ; and I 
might be content to leave this arena, conscious of their appi'obation for 
duty done. Since this war began I have sought, but found no place for 
compromise in the dominant party. Hence I have mournfully, though 
constantly by vote and voice, upheld the sword, lest even a worse alter- 
native — eternal separation and prolonged strife — should be our fate. The 
miseries which this war has entailed, have not been the work of the North- 
ern Democracy ; and if disunion comes through the open doors of Janus 
— if recognition of Southern independence comes through war or its dis- 
asters — the Democracy are not responsible for the odium, and with my 
word and aid shall never be held responsible. Those who are swift to 
recognize Southern independence may do so ; but by all the memories of 
our conflicts Avith secession and abolition, I will never, never, be counted 
among those who have aided in the dismemberment of the Republic. 
Would that 1 could see in our present policy a gleam of hope for our fu- 
ture. How gladly would I hail it ! But until that policy is reversed, all 
our future is shrouded. Like my distinguished friend from Indiana [Mr. 
VooRHEEs], whose dirge-like speech still haunts my memory, I see in the 
continuance of the present misrule only the throes of this nation, writh- 
ing in the despair of dissolution. The bloody sweat, the feverish pulse, 
the delirious raving, and the muscular agony, go before that prostration, 
which " Death the Skeleton and Time the Shadow " have consummated 
for all republics, which have in evil hours yielded the sceptre of the 
people to the grasp of Passion and the greed of Power. The eloquent 
requiem which my friend pronounced, sounding like the wail of the be- 
reaved among the tombs of the dead, should, if heeded, teach us, before 
too late, how beyond all price is the boon which is passing from us for- 
ever. He finds hope in autumn, for the spring will bring its bloom ; hope 
in the storm, for the cloud will pass and the sun shine again ; but no hope 
in the grave of our Republic — none, none for our dying Republic. Mr. 
Speaker, sadly as his thoughts have impressed me, I can yet see some 
hope for our Nation ; for I believe in the immortality of civilization and 
the grace of the Christian religion. While to him the future is black 
with a pall, I look beyond his prospect of the hearse and the tomb — the 
mourners and the darkened window — to the resurrection ! The grave 
shall lose its sting, and death its victory. The mourner shall be com- 
forted. The hght of a better dawn shall enter into the darkened chamber. 
I too go to Holy Writ as he did, but I go for the purpose of cheer and not 
of despondency ; for I read there that '" Good tidings shall bind up the 
brohen-hearted, and to them that mourn in Zion^ give unto them beauty for 
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit 
of heaviness. * * * And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise 
up the former desolations, * * * as the earth bringefh forth her bud, 
and the garden causeth things that are sown in it to spring forth." '' Go 
through, go through the gates, prepiare ye the ivay of the People ; cast up, cast 
up the h ighway ; lift up a standard for the PEOPLE ! " Sir, that standard 
for the people shall be high advanced ! My friend himself will bear it to 
the West. In the honest yeomaniy of the Mississippi Valley, and in the 



372 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

eternal principles of constitutional Democracy and regulated freedom, do 
I read a more cheering horoscope ! I will not, do not, and cannot de- 
spair. I would rather die in my simple faith in popular intelligence and 
republican institutions, than yield my heart to the sadness which freights 
each passing hour with its gloom. There is one hope left. If the bayonet 
shall be unfixed at our polls, if no persuasive appliances of money shall 
attaint an honest election, I do not despair of a verdict in favor of that 
party whose principles I have loved for their national history and unsec- 
tional spii'it. Fond as I am of historic research, I cannot follow my 
friend in mourning over the dust of departed empire. I read in the de- 
cline and fall of republican governments lessons of wisdom and hope for our 
own guidance. In the remarks which I shall submit, I propose to show 
from history how statesmanship has saved the fallen columns of constitu- 
tional liberty, how the victories of war have been crowned by the more 
renowned, important, and difficult victories of peace, and how allegiance 
has been rekindled by the sweet breath of kindness fanning the almost 
dying embers of patriotism. This may seem like a thankless and useless 
task, in view of the convulsions and prejudices of the hour ; but the issue 
demands such an exposition. That issue is — shall freedom, peace, and 
union be restored by a change of rulers and policy, or shall we set aside 
the teachings of the past, and permit the work of disintegration and ruin 
to go on? 

The Executive has proposed an amnesty. I would not turn away 
from its contemplation. As each day may offer the chance of concilia- 
tion, I welcome any sign of peace, though the bov^ of promise be dim and 
unsubstantial, and though it be wreathed over the very cataract of our 
national doom ! The message of the President should be welcomed, not 
so much for what it is, as for what it pretends to be. It is his first ad- 
venture beyond the line of force into the field of conciliation. As Ms 
former policy showed a will to change and crush civil relations by the 
iron hand, so the present policy is but its continuance ; for he only drawg 
over the mailed hand a silken, though transparent glove. His plan is the 
will of the commander, while pretending to be the Avisdom of the civilian. 
The Avar power, as illustrated by the administration, has no more founda- 
tion in our Government than this peace power, assuming to pardon crime 
Avithout conviction, and revivify dead States which are indestructible. 
But duty demands a thorough sifting of this pretentious amnesty. The 
Democratic party have Avorn the stigma, as it has been deemed, of leaning 
too much toward conciliation. Our gravest fault has been that we are 
suspected somcAvhat of having read the Sermon on the Mount, and that 
we have believed in the gentleness and efiectiveness of our religion. Even 
such Democrats as have favored the superaddition of clemency to the 
enginery of war as a means of reunion have been ostracized, while those 
Avho have found no elements of union save in affection, without coercion, 
have been imprisoned and exiled. It Avould be ungracious in us, there- 
fore, to dismiss even this semblance of pacification without examination. 
Let us examine it in the light of history. If it be right, it shall not be 
rejected because it comes from a President not in our favor. If it sound 
hollow — if it be the Trojan horse, full of armed men, ready to surprise 



I 



CIVIL WAK. 373 

the citadel of our Constitution, let us drag its insidious features to the 
light for condemnation. 

To test the genuineness of this amnesty : Five months have gone, but 
we see no signs of thousands of southern citizens rushing to embrace this 
amnesty. Indeed, it is conceded that the rebellion is now more formi- 
dable than ever. Unlike the acts of grace granted by kings to their recu- 
sant subjects, of which history is full, there is no general taking of the 
oath, no genuine movement toward the restoration of the seceded States, 
but a fiercer spirit of resistance, produced by the unwise and exasperating 
policy of the Executive. The President's plan has been widely published 
in the papers South, as the " Richmond Sentinel" says, to " animate their 
popular patriotism." The forgiveness offered by the President is deemed 
a mockery and its terms an insult. What a delusion to hold out such a 
Dead Sea apple — ashes to the lip, and hardly fruit to the eye. How many 
people in the North would take an oath to support those negro poHcies of 
the past two years ! I never, never would. I would as soon think of 
swearing allegiance to secession. I would as soon tie my soul to the body 
of death. And can you expect the southern people in their present tem- 
per, saddened by loss and irate with revenge, to do what our constituents — 
one million and a half of northern voters — would scorn us for doing? 
There could have been no hope of a returning South by such a plan. It 
is an amnesty which is a juggle, for it pleases no one who is to be reached. 
It is based on a proclamation which is a delusion, for no one was freed 
by it whom our armies had not enfranchised. It is the old unsoundness, 
newly daubed with imtempered mortar. There is one chief defect in the 
President's plan. It is the structure built upon his proclamation of eman- 
cipation. The same defect is observable in the bill of the gentleman 
from Maryland [Mr. Davis]. That too is based on the one-tenth system 
and the policy of forced emancipation. He proposes to " guarantee to 
certain States, whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a 
republican form of government." This is the title of his bill. I deny, 
first, that these State governments are overthrown ; and second, that his plan 
substitutes a republican form. His plan is to appoint provisional briga- 
dier governors, who are to be charged with the civil administration until a 
State Government shall be recognized as his bill provides. He requires 
an oath to the Constitution to be taken, which is very well ; but by whom? 
By one-tenth of the people. They shall be sufficient to construct the new 
State, whose republican form of government is already dictated to them 
by the bill of the gentleman from Maryland. They " s/ia// " abolish 
slavery. Then the other steps are to be taken, and the new republican 
State is to be recognized. In some of its features this bill is an improve- 
ment upon the rickety establishment proposed by the President ; but it is 
obnoxious to the same objection. It is a usurpation of the sovereignty of 
the people by the Federal functionaries, and it regards the old States as 
forever destroyed. The plans proposed are objectionable, because of the 
mode of construction and the kind of fabric to be rebuilt. As the eman- 
cipation proclamation, or the emancipation act of the gentleman, can never 
be reconciled with the normal control of the States over their domestic in- 
stitutions, so all oaths to sustain the .same are oaths to subvert the old 
governments, Federal and State. The oath required, both of loyal and 



374 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

disloyal men in the South, is an oath of infidelity to the very genius of 
our federative system, for it is an oath to aid anarchy, and out of anarchy 
create a " new nation ! " It receives no countenance from those who are 
wedded to the Constitution as it is and the States as they Avere ; but it 
lifts the hand to God in attestation of a design to subvert both ! The 
President's plan, therefore, whether intended or not, is an oath to en- 
courage treason, and the plan of the gentleman from Maryland is a plan 
to consummate revolution. 

By no state of war, by no act of secession, by no military power, by 
no possible or actual condition, can this change in our policy be allowed 
Avithout a total subversion of our government, and without breaking down 
the principle of permanence and reinstating a new and worse revolution. 
Who is there to deny the " normal supremacy of the States over their 
domestic affairs" ? Is it the jurist? I refer him to repeated decisions of 
the Supreme Court, and of every other respectable authority in the juris- 
prudence of America. Is it the historian ? I refer him to the debates 
of the Constitutional Convention and the history of our States, both the 
original thirteen and those afterwards admitted. Is it the diplomatist? I 
refer him to Mr. Seward's despatch, wherein he says : 

" The rights of the States and the condition of every human being in them will re- 
main precisely the same, whether the revolution shall succeed or whether it shall fail. In 
one case the States would be federally connected with the new Confederacy ; in the other, 
they would, as now, be members of the United States ; but their constitutiotii and laws^ 
customs, habits, and institutions, in either case will remain the same.'" 

Is it an old-line Whig? I refer him to Henry Clay, who held that to 
break down the incontestable power of the State over its own institutions 
was to break do"\'\Ti both Federal and State constitutions, and, beneath 
their ruin, to bury forever the liberty of both white and black races. Is 
it a Democrat ? Read your platforms for thirty years, and learn again the 
language of Jetferson and Madison, and the i^ractical teachings of Douglas 
in his great contest for extending popular sovereignty over domestic mat- 
ters from the States to the territories. Is it a Republican? I refer him 
to the Chicago platform, which resolves that "the maintenance inviolate 
of the rights of the States, and especially the rights of each State to order 
and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment ^ 
exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection 
and endurance of our political fabric depends." Is it the members of the 
last Congress ? I refer them to the Crittenden resolution, as to the rights, 
dignity, and equality of the States. Is it you, Mr. Speaker, the exponent 
of the will of this body? I refer you to the resolution you voted : " That 
neither the Federal Government nor the people, nor the governments of 
non-slaveholding States, have a purpose or a constitutional right to legis- 
late upon or interfere with slavery in any of the States of the Union." 
Is it the President himself ? Oh ! shameful treachery ! Shame to him- 
self and treachery to the trusting ! Shall I recall his repeated sayings by 
proclamation, calling on soldiers to peril their lives, or by message, giving 
us his solemn convictions of duty? Shall I refer to his message wherein 
he repudiated the idea of disturbing the system of slavery, as foreign to 
his inclination and his duty, or to his direction to Mr. Seward to inform 
foreign powers that any efibrt to distm'b that system " on his part would be 



CIYIL WAR. 375 

unconstitutional " ? Is it the philosophic thinker ? I refer him to the ex- 
positions of M. De Tocqueville (vol. i., p. 69), who, better than any one 
abroad, has examined the complex nature of our Government, beginning 
with the to%ATiship and rising through many grades to the Federal author- 
ity, and who found here " two governments, completely separate and 
almost independent — the one fulfilling the ordinary duties and responding 
to the daily and indefinite calls of a community, the other circumscribed 
within certain limits, and only exercising an exceptional authority over 
the general interest of the couutry." 

These expressions were made in view of or in time of war. The in- 
dependent spheres of National and State Governments were ever regarded, 
in words, if not in acts, by the very party in power ; and now their test 
of loyalty is an oath to forswear their own oaths ! Now their touchstone 
of patriotism is — an oath to commit political turpitude ! And this is 
called an amnesty ! This oath, which is to be taken at once by loyal and 
disloyal men, is to be the sweet oblivious balm over past crime by a clem- 
ent Executive ! This battering down of the Constitution is to be the 
Aladdin witchery, which in a night is to reconstruct a " perpetual cosmos 
of beauty and power, out of the chaos of civU conflict." Because we do 
not shout hosannahs to this new cosmos, Democrats are reproached as 
favoring slavery. No, sir. We do not like slavery. For one, I say again 
as I have said before, let it die, if die it must, not by the rough usages 
of war, not by the starvation, miscegenation, or extirpation of the black 
race, not by the strangulation of State and popular sovereignty ; but by 
the voluntary and legal action of the States, when they are in a condition 
freely to express their choice. Why use the sentiment against slavery to 
crush out the fundamental principles of our Government? Why, in 
striving to destroy slavery, drag down the pillars of the Constitution? 
When to kill slavery you destroy the " balance of powers on which 
the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends," I must and 
will denounce you. How many expressions from the other side of the 
chamber have I been called upon to denounce, because they urge the 
abandonment of our old and I'are political fabric. These expressions are 
all impearled by an exquisite thinker of the radical school — Senator Gratz 
Brown — when he says : 

" Who cares for the Union of the past — a Union fraught with seeds of destruction — 
bitter with humiliations and disappointments ? Who believes in the <^rief of these hired 
mourners, so lachrymose before the world ? They are not even self-deceived. It is like- 
wise with reconstructions — a freemasoniy that imagines it has only blocks and stones to 
deal with, or a child's play, that would build up as they have tumbled down its card-cas- 
tles, putting affably the court cards on top again. Foolish craftsmen, seeing not that it 
is the life arteries and the thews and the sinews of a nation's being that are dealt with, 
and that it must be regeneration or death." 

The Union thus dismissed with so. much scorn, is the same Union 
which Lord Brougham called (Political Philosophy, Part III., page 330) 
" the very greatest refinement in social policy, to which any state of circum- 
stances had ever given rise, or to whicli any age has ever given birth " — 
which deserved his eulogy, because, as he held, there was in it the means 
for keeping its integrity as a federacy, by the maintenance of the rights 
and powers of the individual States. The Union " as it should be " — the 



376 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGKESS. 

Union of the "wise craftsmen" of to-day and not of the foolish fathers 
who made it — is not the Union I have learned to admire and loved to 
cherish ; not the Union which, for the past seven years, I have pleaded here 
to maintain without blood and perpetuate without peril. 

These plans of regeneration involve a change in the stnacture of the 
Government. They break down the spirit of municipal independence, in 
destroying which, as De Tocqueville has shown, you destroy the spirit of 
liberty. No matter what form is left, the despotic tendency will inevi- 
tably appear, when the local authority is usurped. If you leave any form 
of Government, it is the will of the Executive, it is a despotic centraliza- 
tion — Russian, Asiatic, the I'ule of military bashaws, or provincial king- 
lets. Whether appointed by Congress or the President, they hold their 
power from Washington, and they must remain at the head of their troops, 
and at the call of their chief. Our Republic then deserves not its name. 
It is no longer the " United States." It is a United State, a geographical 
unit, holding together subject provinces by the brute force of petty tyrants. 

Believing that the scope and aim of the proclamation will not restore 
the Union, nor propitiate any portion of the South, except demagogues 
and hirelings, who sell their birthright for the price of power, let us inquire 
what motive could have induced the President to proclaim it, in a moment 
of success to our arms and depression to the South. One suggestion will 
satisfy as to the motive. I am sorry to believe it ; but the President de- 
sires renomination. He is a man whose mind has every angle but the 
right angle. In his nature, cunning contends with fanaticism. From 
the time he developed his irrepressible conflict doctrine, so much praised 
by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Arnold], until its latest expression 
in his last message, his course has been equivocal. But meanwhile how 
shrewdly he has balanced between the factions of his party. His inau- 
gural recognized his obligations to the Constitution. He would not inter- 
fere with slavery. How prodigal were his promises to the Border. How 
quick to plant his foot on Phelps, Hunter, and Fremont for playing Au- 
gustulus. He desired some day to play Augustus. Abolitionism should 
be hatched under no influences but his own. How he lectured one of his 
editors for impatience. Conservatives held up his hands, while he pre- 
vailed against these Radicals. He toyed with emigration, colonization, 
and compensation schemes. He made a gradual emancipation theory 
with a short fuse which soon exploded. It hurt no one. But the time 
came for him to play revolutionist ; and with seeming reluctance, he is- 
sued the Proclamation of Emancipation. He desired the people to pass 
on it. They did. They condemned it in 1862. He adhered to it. In 
his Springfield letter, and in his late message, he dedicates all power to its 
execution. Meanwhile, a contest springs up as to the State suicide doc- 
trine. It divides his party, and even the Cabinet. He has Missouri on 
his hands. Radicals are rampant. He acts Conservative awhile, until 
the days of November, 1864, begin to approach ; then, lo ! this message 
as the climax of his long series of ambiguities. That I may do the Pres- 
ident no injustice, I quote from his own partisan, Senator Pomeroy in 
his circular, who says : " The people have lost all confidence in Mr. Lin- 
coln's ability to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union. He has 
been weak and vacillating, wasteful of national blood and treasure, profli- 



CIVIL WAR. 377 

gate and corrupt." There is only one solution for these inconsistencies. 
He is trying to please both Avings of his party, to secure his nomination. 
With dexterous chicanery he has jahrased and framed his late plan, so that 
it may admit of two voices. He will not give up his Emancipation Pro- 
clamation or the confiscation and penal laws. "To abandon them now,'* 
he says, " would be not only to relinquish a lever of power, but would 
also be cruel and an astounding breach of faith." This should suit the 
Radicals. For a lighter shade of his party he promises what is a mere 
delusion — an adjudication of the question of theu- legality by the Supreme 
Court. True, he has declared all means like these which he now pro- 
mulges, unconstitutional ; yet he would submit them to the Court ! When 
and how ? Why, after he has made the slave a freedman by the sword ! 
What a mockery is such a submission. But it will do to make him a 
candidate ; and more than that, it might elect him President. If his 
plan of making one-tenth rule in the States should succeed, then he will 
have ready at hand the electoral votes of Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, 
Tennessee, North Carolina, and other States. He began this business in 
Florida the other day, and the blood which flowed at Olustee is the result 
of this scheme of personal ambition. 

Nine States, without South Carolina, representing G79,310 voters in 
1860, will now, by this peculiar republican form of reconstruction, cast 
electoral votes for the 67,931, who, as one-tenth, are to be registered. 
How many of these will be stipendiaries, or how many bo7id fide citi- 
zens of the States ? But, surely, a candidate with so fair a chance for a 
gigantic, almost a cdntinental fraud as this, must commend himself to a 
party, whose use of power has made a debt of two billions and an expendi- 
ture equal to the expenditure of all former administrations. Hence, when 
this amnesty to rebels was announced, it was regarded as a political 
movement only, and the excitement did not equal that of a prize fight. 
No one was ailected by it. No opponent was changed to, and no friend 
alienated from the Administration, either North or South. If it had been 
an act of good faith and not a partisan manoeuvre, it ought to have bound 
closer to the Administration every friend, and challenged the admiration 
of every opponent. The bells should have been rung, the bonfires blazed, 
and huzzas have rent the air, as the throb of hope pulsated through the 
fevered veins of our nation. No such thing. It was nothing but a bold 
attempt to perpetuate poAver, at the hazard of revolutionary war in the 
North and protracted war in the South. For as surely as the great States 
of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Northwest are over- 
borne by the coalition of these bastard States and rotten boroughs South, 
with New England abolition, so surely will the tocsin of inevitable neces- 
sity sound the alarm of resistance throughout the land. The people may 
sleep now, drugged by the opiate of temporary prosperity, but the excite- 
ment of the Presidential election will stir to its very depth the popular 
disaffection, and in wild saturnaUa the vessel of our hopes may founder 
forever in a sea of blood. 

The pretence of the President is to reconstruct the Union. Where did 
he get his authority to build anew what we can never agree has been 
destroyed ? Is it a part of the war power, or the pardoning power ? It is 
the " best mode the Executive can suggest, with his present impressions." 



378 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGEESS. 

TTill any one point out the clause of the Constitution which would even 
create an " impression" that the Executive has the function either of Su- 
preme Lawgiver, State Constructor, oi; Supreme Dictator ! His meek- 
ness in referring to Congress and the Judiciary the legality of his acts, 
after they are accomplished, is a piece of etfrontery to which Louis Napo- 
leon has' not yet arrived. Where did this unfledged Csesar get his war- 
rant to create sovereignty? 

In discussing this plan, it would be sufficient, without questioning the 
rifht of the President to construct States on condition or pardon on terms, 
simply to discuss whether the conditions and terms are wise, practical, 
and likely to do good. But I propose somewhat in detail to discuss the 
President's plan, in the following order : 

1st, the oath ; 2d, the republican form of the government to be recon- 
sti'ucted ; 3d, the question whether the State governments in the rebel 
States are vital ; 4th, some wise and practical plan such as will aid in re- 
storing the Union under the Constitution. 

I. The oath. — There is a soi't of odium historicuvi attached to all polite 
ical test oaths. They are not original with the President. They have 
been the' bane and foil of good government ever since bigotry began and 
revenge ruled. You cannot make eight millions of people, nearly all in 
revolt at what they regard as the detestable usurpations of abolition, for- 
swear their hatred to abolition. You force by this oath the freed negro 
into the very nostrils of the Southern man, whose submission to law you 
seek. The conditions of the pardon only inflame and do not quench re- 
bellion. The rebellion was in such a state when the amnesty was otfex-ed, 
that it was a golden opportunity for magnanimous statesmanship to pi'of- 
fer generous terms. An amnesty based on another kind of oath (if oaths 
you would have that Heaven would not recoi-d as perjury) might avail. 
I mean an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and all 
laws made in pursuance thereof! But what does this amnesty in fact say? 
To all citizens South, whether loyal or disloyal, it proclaims that one- 
tenth of the voters of 1861, and " excluding all others, shall reestablish a 
State government, which shall be republican and in no wise conti-avening 
said oath ; " that such establishment " shall be recognized as the true 
government of the State," Avhich is to be considered republican in form 
under the Constitution. 

The abolition oath is the basis of the new republican form of govern- 
ment. All who do not agree to that are excluded. All who do not agree 
to the pestilent theory of State death are also excluded. Hence, this plan 
w^ould allow any recent rebel who takes the oath to make a unit in the 
one-tenth, and excludes the Union man who has not forsworn his faith in 
the vitality of the States, and who will not SAvear to support policies and 
laws to which he can never adhere. What becomes of the many thousand 
loyal men of Tennessee, of Texas, of North Carolina, of Arkansas, of 
Louisiana? They are se^ aside for those whose oaths will bind them long 
enough to vote, and who, to save their lives and property, will swear with 
facility. Tlie oath is tendered to men of patriotic probity, who will and 
ought to spurn the test oath of the traitor. Going upon the doctrine that 
all the rebellious districts are unsoimd — assuming the ground that the ter- 
ritory South being belligerent outlaws all, whether loyal or not — the 



CIVIL WAB. 379 

President applies this bitter cup to the Union men who have never flinched 
in their love for the flag. The men who have stood the brunt of this red 
tempest, whose homes have been blackened by fire and whose families 
have been destroyed by the sword ; whose ties of natural affection toward 
brothers and sons in the rebel army never made them swerve in their 
patriotic devotion ; who have even withstood tlie fear of death and de- 
struction, and in spite of the treachery and unkindness of this Administra- 
tion have kept the standard of stars high advanced amid swamps and 
caves and mountains — these men must quaff the cup of bitter waters 
before they can stand before the world as the builders of the new temple 
proposed by the President ! If they were worthy of association in this 
great cohort of States, they would scorn reenfranchisement by such a plan. 
If there were no other reason to reject this juggling scheme, justice to 
" the faithful found among the faithless" South, would demand its rejection. 

II. As to the republican form of government to be made by this plan. 
Republicanism is founded on the will of the people. How does the plan 
work out this will? Suppose Tennessee to-morrow should register one- 
tenth of her 145,348 voters in 1860, viz., 14,534. They make an anti- 
slavery constitution ; a majority of the 14,534 adopt, to wit : 7,268 cit- 
izens. They may have all been rebels ; no matter. They may the day 
after the constitution is adopted change its free clause into a slavery clause, 
or the State into rebellion again ; no matter. There may remain 130,- 
804 voters who do not agree to the constitution, who took no part in its 
manufacture. They may be mixed of Union and rebel proclivities. 
They, however, seek to return to their old allegiance. The spirit of Jack- 
son and the fire of patriotism illumine their wasted hearthstones, and they 
— the nine-tenths — agree to restore the old Constitution of Tennessee under 
the Federal Constitution as it is ; or they may even abolish, as tliey have 
the right, slavery in their midst ; yet the President binds himself to hold 
them in forced submission to the 14,534, or its majority ! The truth is, 
a test oath to require citizens to support his policy as to slaves is, not an 
oath of allegiance to republican government, but to the Republican party. 
It is an oath of fealty to Abraham Lincoln. He sends out heralds to pro- 
claim : " Ho ! ye ; all wlio will prepare to forswear your sentiments and 
enter into an arrangement to make new States with one-tenth over nine- 
tenths, and thus form electoral colleges to vote for me, I swear by my 
army and navy, that you, though you are pardoned criminals, shall be 
the cornerstones in the new State, and shall have the shield of the Ex- 
ecutive and the protection of the flag ! " In vain we search Spanish 
American annals for so shameless a pronunciamiento for revolution and 
anarchy. It is thus, Mr. Speaker, that your party seeks to unhinge the 
massive portals which lead witliin the chambers of reserved popular power — 
those doors which for so many years, on the golden hinges turning, opened 
so readily to the States as they entered within the sacred adytum of our 
political faith. 

There is one answer to these propositions always on tlie lip of the anti- 
slavery devotee. He holds that no slave State can 1je accounted re- 
publican. This would be news, indeed, to the Jeftersons, Washingtons, 
Madisons, and Adamses, who established these States as republican, 
twelve out of thirteen being slave at the outset. This would be news, 



380 EIGHT YEAES EST CONGEESS. 

indeed, to the pioneers of the Northwest, to the early settlers of Ohio, 
who remember the deed of cession of Virginia, whereby our sovereignty 
was forever declared to be equal to and inviolate as that of the slave State 
of Virginia. 

But what sort of republicanism is that which builds a State from a 
small minority of its people ? The majority of a people, expressing its own 
will, forms a republic. A minority, or even a majority, following the vdll 
of a despot, forms a monarchy. One-tenth of the legal voters ruling nine- 
tenths, is an oligarchy. Reconstruction of republican governments on 
such a basis, is as absurd as the structures built by the architects in Gul- 
liver, who began their houses at the roof in the air ! The President quotes 
the guaranty of the Constitution as to republican State governments, and 
promises under its sanction protection to these pseudo-republics ! But 
he forgets that if the Southei-n States are deceased, or out of the Union, 
there is the third section of article fourth of the Constitution, which pro- 
vides for the admission of States. Does the President, iu his theory, 
propose to disregard this clause? Unless Congress consent, all these 
scaffoldings, erected by his own wilj, will tumble to naught. If States 
can be declared dead, or burned out by the tires of war, perhaps New 
England may some day fiud her theory come home, in a reconstruction of 
her six States into one, and the reduction of her twelve Senators into two ! 
Lines of longitude, as well as of latitude, may sometimes reconstruct 
States. The basis of our Federal Government is States, having constitu- 
tions and laws — the emanation of the popular will. This will is expressed 
through suffrage. This suffrage in States is regulated by their own con- 
stitution and laws. State voters thus qualified, and they only, can vote 
for members of Congress. When, therefore, the President undertakes to 
breathe into a State the breath of life by a new code of suffrage, even if 
the State were defunct, he usurps a power never granted, and a sover- 
eignty belonging solely to the people. If these States in rebellion are de- 
stroyed — if the tabula rasa remains, upon which the President can write 
new constitutions, with new qualifications for voters — then secession and 
revolution have done legally what no one but a rebel or traitor ever be- 
lieved could be done. 

III. This brings me to the radical question of the day. The message 
of the President and the bill of the gentleman from Maryland assume 
that the State governments in the rebel States are out of existence or 
usurped, and that the territory should be governed as such by the United 
States, until new State governments shall be formed. The President does 
not commit himself to this plan as the only one : " Saying one thing, he 
does not mean to say that he would not say another." Very well. But 
one thing he has assumed — that the old States are gone. But let us do 
him justice. He suggests that on " reconstructing a loyal State govern- 
ment in any State, the name of the State, the boundary, the subdivisions, 
&c., may be maintained ; " provided, always, the abolition policy prevail. 
This is like the prescript of the old Sultan, who, in commanding an obnox- 
ious vizier to be ensackcd and thrown into the Bosporus, generously hoped 
his turban and clothes might remahi unmoistened. I know it is said that 
the President repudiates the policy of reducing the States to territories. 
llis plan is to select, as nearly as may be, the old building-spot ; perhaps 



CIVIL WAE. 381 

use some of the old foundations, say one-tenth ; but he changes radically 
the plan and structure of the building, and takes away from its lord the 
sovereign control of the establishment. He insists that there shall be homo- 
geneity of arrangement in the structure ; that for different conditions, 
classes, systems, climate, and position, the same relations shall be insti- 
tuted. This plan is not only absurd in philosophy, imsound in economy, 
but revolutionary in practice. He in fact says : " I shall fight on to keep 
the Southern States out until they conform to my views as to negroes. 
My abolition condition to Union is inexorable ! The proclamation shall 
be on a par with the Constitution. Let no one bleed for one without dying 
for the other ! " God help the nation, plunged in an abyss of blood for 
such crudities ! 

Surely, if the State suicide doctrine be sound, this plan of rebuilding 
is not. Let me consider that State suicide doctrine. It professes to be 
based on the decision of the Supreme Court in the Hiawatha case. That 
decision is perverted to sustain this theory. The Court condemned cer- 
tain property captured, because the property was within the lines of the 
enemy, actually holding those lines by force, though without right ; and 
not because of the moral or political relation of the owner. The Court 
decided nothing as to the legal and political status of the OT\Tier ; but be- 
cause the property would help the enemy, it was to be taken as prize of 
war. There is in that decision no recognition of the right of secession ; 
much less of the monstrous and cruel doctrine that rebels in arms can 
abolish the legal rights of loyal men or the institutions of States. 

If war blots out the States insurgent, by virtue of its territorial and 
belligerent character, then war does by its violence, what secession would 
do by its ordinances. The right to expunge a State is co-ordinate with 
the right to secede. If a State can be forced out by the vote of its own 
sovereignty, or by combinations of men, without a constitutional amend- 
ment, then any State can be expelled by Federal action. If the Union 
becomes disagreeable to a State, then the State may become disagreeable 
to the Union ; and if a State may retire at pleasure, why cannot a State 
be repudiated at will? These rights — if they exist, which I deny — co- 
relate. They are inseparable. Suppose it had been proposed to expel 
South Carolina from the Union for her contumacy, or Massachusetts for 
her intermeddling — what a burst of indignation we should have had from 
each ! They would have exclaimed : " Show us the power to throttle our 
State sovereignty, by denying us participation in this blessed Union. 
What ! strip us of our American citizenship — place us outside of your navi- 
gation and commercial laws and treaties ; leave us at the mercy of foreign 
powers ; belittle us to nothing ; rob us of our common interests in a com- 
mon treasure, territory, government, history, and glory. Never ! " Yet 
wherein does this claim of holding these States South as conquered prov- 
inces by military force, degrading the equal dignity of the States by the 
creation of a new sovereign power, differ in principle from secession? If 
secession be a nullity, and if the Constitution is not impaired, nor the 
rights of the States destroyed, then I can see how arms — inspired by wise 
and persuasive measures — may in time redeem the States ; but on the other 
theory, all the tears, miseries, confiscations, and blood are iu vain, in 
vain, in vain. Can we be surprised, therefore, that an analytic mind like 



382 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

that of the Postmaster General, should have at once descried in these fal- 
lacies of abolition, a conspiracy in aid of the rebellion? 

IV. I now propose to apply the lessons of history, by inquiring 
whether, even admitting all these plans to be legal, and even if decided to 
be so, some wiser, better, and more practicable plan may not be adopted. 
Is there no amnesty, no accommodation possible ? There is. I believe 
that the restoration of the Union is possible, if we pursue a proper policy. 
Tlie restoration of the Union as it was, is only impossible to those who, 
for other objects, do not desire it. The reconciliation of all the States is 
possible — nay, probable, with the restoration of the doctrine of local self 
government and State sovereignty on matters not delegated to the Federal 
Government. I know no other hope. If this fail, all is dark and chaotic. 
Diverse interests and systems find their unity alone in this system of 
laissez /aire to the States. How then is it possible to restore local and 
State sovereignty, and thus unite our hapless and lacerated country? His- 
toiy never presented so grand a problem for statesmanship. I approach 
it with something of that awe which solemnizes the soul when we enter 
within some vast and consecrated fabric — vistas and aisles of thought 
opening on every side — pillars and niches and cells within cells, mixing in 
seeming confusion, but all really in harmony, and rich with a light 
streaming through the dim forms of the past, and blest with an efHuence 
from God, though dimmed and half lost in the contaminated reason and 
passion of man. 

Conscious of the magnitude of this rebellion, and oppressed with the 
feebleness of the policy directed against it, I still believe in the restoration 
of the old Union. Hence, whatever method I should advocate for the 
conduct of the war, or the celebration of peace, I am forever concluded 
against one conclusion, the independence of the South. I believe the 
principle of unity to be absolutely superior to the right of sectional nation- 
ality. The destiny of these United States is to continue united, and per- 
haps to add other States, until the whole continent is in alliance. Our 
fate is to expand and not to contract our influence or our limits. All 
other notions are but transitory and evanescent. 

I am happy to be in accord with the President, if indeed he holds yet 
to the doctrine announced in his Inaugural : " Physically speaking, we 
cannot separate." I had adopted the same sentiment, that there were 
Union foundations, by the very political geology of God, upon which the 
old Union could and Avould be rebuilt. In his first message, the President 
held: 

" The t'.vo sections could not remove from each other, noi' build an impassable wall 
between them ; that intercourse, amicable or hostile, must continue. Is it possible, then, 
to make tliat intercourse more advantageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than 
he/ore ? Can ahens make treaties easier than friends can make laws ? Can treaties be 
more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends ? Suppose you go 
to war, you cannot fight always ; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on 
either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again 
upon you." 

These sentiments are founded in principle, and drawn by correct de- 
ductions from history. They are the germ of all true politics. Sorry am 
I that in a moment of pi-essure and temptation he should have been di-awn 



CIVTL WAR. 383 

from them by the weird whisperings of ambition under tlie baleful eclipse 
of fanaticism. 

The argument from physical, and therefore from economic reasons, 
for the perpetuity of the Union, is powerful. But history and the experi- 
ence of other nations show that the dissolution of the old Union might con- 
sist with a different kind of unity. Any union which would leave trade free 
and locomotion unrestricted between the States North and South, interior 
and exterior, would answer the mere physical and economic objects of 
union. It is well known that Judge Douglas contemplated as among the 
possibilities an American Zollverein, which would have secured unity of 
territory for commercial purposes. In an essay which he said had cost 
him more labor than any work of his life, and which death prevented him 
from giving to his countrymen, he ascribed our situation to the aggi'essive 
spirit of abolitionism, and held that, for the present, nothing but a com- 
mercial union, founded upon the plan of the States of Germany, would be 
practicable to sustain those influences which made the United States the 
happiest and most prosperous of nations. But he only contemplated it 
as an initial point from which he would, through common interests and 
kindness, move on to a more intimate union, xmtil in time the Union as it 
was might again be restored in its primitive fulness and glory ! * 

Something more than physical boundaries and commercial reasons 
must exist to make that old Union possible. The President understands 
it, without giving it fuU emphasis, when he says : " Friends make laws," 
and the "identical old questions as to terms of intercourse " remain after 
fighting. Fighting may do much, it may be admitted ; exhaustion, calam- 
ities, and bloodshed may make it the interest of men to coalesce to avoid such 
horrors ; but what can produce in a people the idem sententiam de repub- 
lica ? Can that be forced ? If not, what will you add to and after 
force, to inspire the common sentiment which we call patriotism? Many 
sad and harsh experiences may be ours before that event. Military rule, 
anarchy, destruction of individual opinion, speech, and liberty — all these 
may be in the path of the old or of another polity. These will be our ex- 
periences, unless we take the straight, short, and right line of the Consti- 
tution. We may wander forty years in a political wilderness before we 
attain the promise of our youthful and exiiltant nationality. 

Before attempting to show how this nationality may be restored, it 
would be best to define it. What then is Nationality ? Let the definition 
of the English logician, John Stuart Mill, answer : " We mean a princi- 
ple of sympathy, not of hostility ; of union, not of separation. We mean 
a feeling of common interest among those who live imder the same Gov- 
ernment, and are contained within the same natural or historical boun- 
daries. We mean that one part of the community shall not consider 
themselves as foreigners Avith regard to another part ; that thei/ shall 
cherish the tie which holds them together ; shall feel that they are one people ; 
that their lot is cast together; that evil to any of their fellow countrymen is 
evil to themselves ; and that they cannot selfishly free themselves from 
their share of any common inconvenience by severing the connection." 

Is it not strange to a dispassionate thinker, that those who are not hos- 

* Speech of Hon. Henry May, Feb. 2, 1863.—" Globe," 3d session 37th Congress, p. 687. 



384 EIGHT YEAES m CONGRESS. 

tile in the sense of liate to the South ; those who would woo them to the 
ancient order and Union, by reason, old associations, the allurements of 
peace and patriotism, to make again of the circle of equal States the old 
Federal sovereignty, should be held to be the least national ; while those 
who have so far forgotten the common interest of all, under the same 
Government, who regard themselves as alien to the South, even as the 
South regard themselves as alien to us, should be held as the most nation- 
al? I do proclaim it, on the basis of a logic incontestable, that he among 
us who wishes most evil to any part of the country is the moral traitor 
AND social anarch. They, too, who would selfishly free themselves, 
from their share of any common inconvenience by severing the connection, 
like those of the vSouth, are also enemies to the whole country. What can 
we think of his national feeling, Avho would so disregard the interest of 
one half of his own country, as to wish to see it utterly erased by war ; a 
tabula rasa ; its cotton crop, and other exports, worth $200,000,000 an- 
nually, which is required as the basis of our commerce and for the pay- 
ment of our debts, andwliich gave the nation the advantage of the world, 
entirely ruined or transferred to other and alien hands ; its laborers col- 
onized in tropical lands to benefit foreigners, or suddenly freed without 
benefit to themselves or to the superior race ; and its very statehood blot- 
ted out, because of the sedition of its people ! 

We are powerful in proportion as \^e are national. If we should fol- 
low the advice of passion, and treat the Southern States now in civil war 
as England treated Ireland, we become weak and denationalized. If we 
pursue the South with a licentious uncivic soldiery, gloating with antici- 
pations of the plunder of private effects, or with the promises already held 
out of parcelling out the lands of the South as the bounty which revenge 
pays for pillage, thus whetting a tigerish appetite for a great festival of 
blood and rapine, we may be sure that the special Nemesis which Herodo- 
tus traced through the eaidy eras of history, will haunt the men who insti- 
gate and the jnen who execute such a fell and imbecile policy. If, as in 
Home once and in Spanish America now, we bribe one part of the nation 
by the robbery of another portion ; then we may be sure that conflicts 
will be renewed when exhaustion is overcome, and our flag, like that of 
old Spain, will typify a river of blood between margins of gold. If we 
would avoid the constant aggregation and disintegration of feeble masses 
in different provinces, such as the history of South America demonstrates, 
we must learn to carry out, better than the President has done, his own 
principle of friendly legislation, instead of repellent alienation. Powerful 
as are our armies — gradually encroaching amidst many mistakes and 
vicissitudes upon the territory which is insurgent — great as are our Par- 
rott guns, and invulnerable as are our iron-clads, one tiling we have to 
learn yet from history, that our best soldiers are not, like Charlemagne's 
paladins, possessed of enchanted weapons. The only weapon which 
wounds tlie cause of rebellion, and yet which can transmute the rebel into 
tlie ])atriot, is the enchantment of friendship. lie who would destroy a 
part of his own country, as if it were alien, has no more love for it than 
Saturn had for tlie children of his own loins whom he devoured. Such a 
creature is not a patriot, even if he were a man. Patriotism never de- 



CIVIL WAK. 385 

sires to weaken or disgrace, but always to strengthen and glorify the 
country. 

From these suggestions it will be apparent that something besides 
force is needed to reconcilo- States which are insurgent. What that some- 
thing is, which I may call the philosophy of union, can be ascertained by 
understanding what that element is, which is the philosophy of dissolution. 
All distui'bances of property, person, liberty, home — whether by emanci- 
pation, confiscation, extermination, or other repellent policies — can never 
beget confidence. No plan that debars nine-tenths of a people from polit- 
ical privileges, and outlaws them from their own homes and rights, can 
renew allegiance. But such confidence and allegiance have been begotten 
and renewed in other lands rent with civil feuds; why not in tliis? To 
answer this, I shall consider, fust, the mode by which such results can be 
attained, and secondly, the, illustrations from history showing such results. 

1st. States or societies are made up of individuals. To reform society 
or control masses, individuals must be reached. M. Guizot, in liis His- 
tory of Civilization (page 25), has demonstrated that two elements are 
comprised in the great fact that we call civilization, the progress of soci- 
ety and the progress of individuals. The one is but the external phenom- 
enon of which the other is the cause. Society is merely the theatre for the 
immortal man. Society is made for man, not man for society. Society 
dies, changes, rots, regrows, and decays again ; man blooms in immortal 
youth beyond this limited destiny. When, therefore, you adopt a policy 
to restore States or rebuild the dismantled social order, you must begin 
by reaching the character of men, influencing their literature, their tastes, 
their maxims, their laws and institutions, their industries, their weahh and 
its distribution and means of attainment, their occupations, their divisions 
into classes, and all their relations to each other. Whenever you have 
harmonized these so as to give contentment, you may be assured that no 
military compression or civil oppression can long keep the individuals in- 
terested from a common consent to the common Government. Hence, 
when the philosophic statesman percei^*es such a civil convulsion as tiiis 
which arrays the sections of America in deadly conflict, he must accom- 
pany his historic researches with the d imori reasons grounded in human 
nature. Thus he may construct his science of social statics, and ascer- 
tain the requisites of stable political unir.n. One of these requisites is the 
habitual discipline and regard for Government on the part of rulers and 
ruled. Let all personal impulses and conscientious convictions be subor- 
dinated to the supreme control of the proper Government ; resist all 
temptation to break through such control ; and you have a tremendous 
element of patriotic unison. Mankind naturally do not like government. 
Brave men are loth to submit to control. Discipline, aided by religion 
and a common interest, is the power which keeps men from becoming 
anarchical. Combined with this civil discipline is the feeling of allegiance. 
Without this feeling no State can be permanent. When the rulers fail to 
give that protection which is the consideration and correlative of allegi- 
ance, then allegiance fails, and society declines, despotism supervenes, or 
foreign conquest is imposed. Let statesmen remember that this is the 
capital defect of our rulers, and the proximate cause of our troubles. 
Thus remembering, let them study history with a view to the reinstate- 
25 " 



386 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. {| 

ment of that protection to labor, liberty, property, and life, whieb assures 
to the State the allegiance of the people. This feeling is sometimes called 
" loyalty." The French philosopher, M. Comte, has thus described it : 

" This feeling may vary in its objects, and is not confined to any particular form of 
government ; but whether in a democracy or a monarchy, its essence is always the same, 
viz., that there be in the constitution of the State something which is settled, something 
permanent, and not to be called in question ; something which, by general agreement, 
has a right to be where it is, and to be secure against disturbance, whatever else may 
change." 

The SACRED SOMETHING in our political system is the written Federal 
Constitution, and the system of State Governments, both having their 
basis in the sovereign will of the people of the States. Not less sacred, 
because not less above discussion, are the reserved rights of the States, 
and the still more important reservation of sovereignty in the people. 
This is the essential permanency of society in the United States. This 
was the relation which all parties, whether at Charleston or at Chicago, 
agreed should not be disturbed ; which the President declared should not 
be disturbed by him ; and the fear of whose disturbance has convulsed a 
nation of thirty millions. This mystic union of the Federal and State 
systems was the sacramental essence, the divine appointment, above the 
storms and eddies of discussion. In this were comprehended our ancient 
liberties and ordinances. Even the domestic institutions of the State were 
imbound with it. Indeed, it was the only fundamental law, pervading our 
society as gravitation pervades the stellar spaces. 

Those, whether North or South, who failed to keep this essence sacred ■ 
and sealed, are responsible for the consequences. Abolitionism, which 
lived by the disturbance of this system, was like secession, for both sprung 
from the same direful agitation and the same disturbance of the Constitu- 
tion. 

But is there no light through the clouds of war ? Have we no solatium 
for past wrongs, no immunity for future griefs? Are anger, hatred, scorn, 
revenge — the brood of wicked passion rankling in the heart — are these to 
remain ? And shall there be no interi-egnum for the serene dynasty of 
peace and love to walk together white-handed through this bleeding and 
bloody land? Shall no one pour the Lethean wave over the scenes of 
death and the sorrows of mourning? Shall there be no recantation of 
the oaths of fierce men, vowing revenge for homes wasted, property con- 
fiscated, brethren destroyed, and cities ruined? O God! Is there no 
hope that even time may be allowed to assuage the hates and griefs 
of this bloody era? Shall the young men of to-day wear the rancor in 
tlieir hearts till their hairs are whitened for the tomb, and teach their chil- 
dren and children's children to perpetuate the hate of the fathers ? If this 
is to be the fate of our Union, then God has mocked His creatures by fix- 
ing them in habitations bound together by the same skies, rivers, moun- 
tains, and lakes ; mocked them by fixing in their hearts the principle of 
love ; and cruelly mocked them by sending to this star a Prince of Peace 
as an Exemplar and a Saviour ! 

Who are the men, or the fiends, who talk of utter extermination ? If 
it were possible, it were execrable ! To exterminate the Southern people 
rather than reach them, as Mr. Lincoln himself proposed, by friendly 



CIVIL WAK. 38Y 

laws, is ,1 crime more heinous than rebellion. Let the pitiless destrnction 
of the Moors of Andalusia by Philip II., the merciless slaughter of the 
French in La Vendee, Claverhouse's bloody hunts after the Scottish 
Covenanters, the stained and cadaverous cheek of Ireland, the blood- 
shot eye of maddened Poland, the grim submission of revengeful Vene- 
tia, teach us by their history that powder cannot cement nor bombs bear 
messages of love. Superadd to your force, conciliation, and then your 
force may not be mere brute violence. Force has welded by its blows, but 
they were tempered in the fire of old and loving associations. " I do not 
fight the South because I hate her," said Mr. Crittenden ; " I love her still." 
Conquest by force is only physical : subjugation does not imply mental 
acquiescence on the part of the vanquished in the ideas of the victor. 
Such a war, therefore, will produce only the status quo ante bellum, leav- 
ing an absolute reciprocal negation ; each party denying the claims of the 
other, and leaving no common grouud for a truce to intellectual conflict. 

How can we reconcile the hostilities of the people thus physically 
bound to Hve in peace and union ? It is clear that if the arms of both 
belligerents should in a moment fall from nerveless hands, there would 
remain to-day the same antagonism of ideas. This antagonism was re- 
conciled on the principles of State sovereignty and local self-government 
as to all domestic questions, including slavery. Webster, Clay, and even 
Calhoun, in 1850, saw union only in this way. Mr. Douglas, Mr. Crit- 
tenden, and even Mr. Davis and Mr. Toombs would have preserved it by 
the same principle in 1861. The compromises of 1861 were drawn from 
this source — a final adjustment of the character of all the territory, and a 
complete nou-iutervention by Congress with the domestic relations of the 
Territories and of the States. This principle would have settled the difli- 
culties. It was defeated by the action of intemperate and blood-desiring 
men. But the rule of right is eternal, for it is born of God. What was 
kind and just before the South resorted to arms is right to-day. The fact 
that war has come and that separation is impossible, makes more urgent 
the ascendency of a party whose first and only preference is for the Union 
through compromise, and who shall at least be allowed to try the experi- 
ment of reconciling the States by guarantees similar to those proposed in 
1861. K it be found impossible to restore the old association of States by 
such negotiation, theii, and not till then, can statesmen begin properlij to 
'ponder the other prohlems connected loith subjugation and recognition. I 
regret that any one, especially my colleague [Mr. Long], should have 
anticipated these questions, and in his patriotic despair should have ex- 
pressed his preference between the alternative of a war of subjugation 
and a recognition of Southern independence. I regard each alternative as 
premature. We may yet change the war from the diabolic purposes of 
those in power, by changing that power to other hands ; and we are not 
ready to sever our Union while that hope remains. Of the two evils of 
subjugation or recognition, I make my choice of neither. 

2d. Thai such restorations have been made in other lands rent by civil 
conflict, I proceed in the last place to show. But such restorations have 
never taken place in the case of an empire of independent provinces, 
governed by local laws, all at once absorbed or compounded into a central 
despotism. War cannot work such restoration ; or if war, under some 



388 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGRESS. 

mighty hand, ever does it, the States disintegrate, and fall an easy prey to 
military will or foreign subjugation. Violence may preside at the birth 
of djTiasties, but violence is at the death-bed. Cassar may defy the Sen- 
ate and cross the Rubicon ; but Caesar had his Brutus. The works of 
violence are soon changed. No juggling plan can help them to success. 
Order, intelligence, justice, and Providence do not consist w^ith violence or 
fraud, or the results of violence and fraud. 

Charlemagne, with all his conquests, accomplished nothing ; all his 
works perished with him. He was the meteor athwart the gloom of bar- 
barism and feudality. M. Guizot has displayed his glories and triumphs, 
his laws and reforms. It has been said that he founded nothing. He 
fouuded all the States which sprung from the dismemberment of his em- 
pire. His empu'e had great temporary unity ; his power and design were 
grand ; but the disorder which sprung from his centralization of power 
was invincible ; and all the unity of force died out with him. Wherever 
his terrible will did not reach in person, the local authorities ruled ; and 
when he died, his dukes, vassals, counts, vicars, centenniers, and scabina 
became independent and resolved tliemselves into local legislatures. His 
vast means of government did not give liberty nor permanency. In the 
letters of the intellectual " giant of those days" — Alcuin — to Charlemagne, 
we find the secret of Chai'lemagne's success. That scholar congratulates 
the Emperor on his victories over the Huns, and gives this advice for their 
reconcilement : " 1st. Send among them gentle-mannered men. 2d. 
Do not require the tithe of them. It is better to lose the tithe than to 
prejudice the people." Another writer gave to Charlemagne this advice : 
" Mortal, always be prepared to treat mortals with mildness ; the law of 
nature is the same for them as for thee. One sacred stream flows for 
them as for thee." This is the philosophy and religion of amnesty. 
Thus tutored, power reached the individual by its mildness, like the sun 
which melted the avalanche. Yet this gi'and empire — belted in by a 
whole zone, imder a prince with a diadem more brilliant thau that of 
Alexander or Napoleon — where love on the one hand and fear on the other 
kept obedience — an empire which had Rome for a citadel and the Door- 
keeper of Heaven as a founder — on the death of its benignant ruler, was 
cleft into dismembered and bleeding fragments. What was a kingdom 
became a Babel of jarring feudalities. The genius of its cohesion died, 
and the coliesion crumbled. When our Constitution — the sacred greatness 
of Avhich is beyond human name — shall die, then another Guizot may re- 
cord of our discordant and divergent States, what he recorded of the great 
Empire of Charlemagne : " Power and the nation were dismembered be- 
cause unity of Power and the nation was impossible." 

Truly, there are fixed laws for the events of history. Society re- 
volves in an orbit. The tenth century is reproduced in another era and 
on another hemisphere. If the principle of cohesion in our country, the 
Constitution, expires, and the sundered States are attempted to be blotted out, 
lo ! a central despotism for a few jarring months or years, to be followed 
by thirty-four or less clashing organisms ! This is the perpetual cosmos 
of beauty and power, to which America is invited by the Destructives in 
power ! The history of man for six thousand years teaches that it is im- 
possible in our day or for our race, or indeed for mankind, to control im- 



CIVIL WAK. 389 

mense regions and large masses of men under the exclusive arhitrium of 
one man or one central government, however Avise. The Em])eror of 
Russia understood this in granting to Finland a free Constitution and 
a local representative assembly ; and although lie fails to treat Poland 
with the same enlightened justice, yet in the end he will be compelled to 
grant her a local Constitution, or bid her depart in peace. Let us con the 
lesson. What is the relation of Russia to Poland now, after nearly fifty 
years of " settlement" by the treaty of 1815? A secret government sits 
viewless at Warsaw. Without a cannon or soldier visible, its power is 
terrible. Russian spies in vain seek for the implacable foe. Executions 
and confiscations are revenged by assassination and fire. Extermination 
is the only remedy Avhich Russia has contemplated in her dilemma. What 
advantage has Russia from such a rule? lias it added to her strength, 
her stability, or her grandeur? The throne before which three lumdred 
languages are spoken, is powerless over a desperate people. Brute force 
only destroys. What revenue does she derive, which is not absorbed? 
What can repay her for the odium of her conduct amidst civilized na- 
tions? Wherein does the new gospel of extermination in this country dif- 
er from the Russian policy toward Poland? At the end of thirty years, 
we may have in the Soutl), Avhat Russia has in Poland, only an army 
which the population of tlie South will despise and defy. We may gain 
the Mississippi ; but where is its olden commerce ? Where is its golden 
prosperity? Our difficulties have been great thus far in strugghng to 
hold the military occupation and power we have attained ; but our diffi- 
culties will have but begim, when we begin this Executive system of am- 
nesty, as an instrument to subjugate and exterminate. 

The most absolute empires which the world has witnessed have been 
but an aggregation of provinces with the power intensely centralized. In 
proportion to the centralization of their power, was their career brief and 
calamitous. Sometimes the success and ability of the ruler has given 
permanency and strength to the State ; but as in the case of Charlemagne, 
so in the case of the ancient Eastern empires, the death of the ruler 
dismembers the realm. The great Mesopotamian monarchy* was an em- 
pire which was made up of a rongeries of kingdoms. In proportion as 
these retained their distinct individuality, remaining as they were before 
their conquest — except the obligations toward the paramount authority — 
the empire subsisted longest. When the local governments kept their old 
laws, religion, line of kings, law of succession, their internal organization 
and machinery, only acknowledging an external suzerainty, they pre- 
served longest their heterogeneoits materials in one empire. But even in 
such an empire there were elements of dissolution. The elements bear 
such a similarity to our own history that I shall examine them, for our 
profit. " No sooner," says Rawlinson, " does any untoward event occur, 
as a disastrous expedition, a foreign attack, a domestic conspiracy, or 
even an untimely or unexpected death of the reigning prince, than the in- 
herent weakness of this sort of government displays itself. The whole 
fabric of empire falls asunder ; each kingdom reasserts its independence, 
tribute ceases to be paid, and the mistress of a hundred States finds her- 

* Rawlinsou's Herodotus, vol. I. p. 393 et seq. 



390 EIGHT TEABS IN CONGEESS. 

self suddenly thrust back into the primitive condition, stripped of tho 
dominion which has been her strength, and thrown entirely upon her o^'ra 
resources. Then the whole task of reconstruction has to be commenced 
anew ; one by one, the rebel countries are overrun — tribute is reimposed — 
submission reenforced. Progress is of course slow and imcertain where 
the empire has continually to be built up again from its foundations, and 
where at any time a day may undo the work it has taken centuries to 
accomplish." 

Shall this chapter be the record of our history ? Already we approach 
its fulfilment. I will not go to Virginia, or Tennessee, or Arkansas. 
Let me take Louisiana, and from one State, learn the fate of others. Go 
to-day into the rich heart of that tropical State, where the orange blooms 
in the air of winter ; or visit it in the summer, when the woods and fields 
are luxuriant wdth their leafy life. You will find the fields no longer 
opulent with corn, cane, or the cotton. There is the luxuriance of 
weeds and decay. The undraiued plantation is becoming the swampy 
pleasure ground of the alligator and moccasin. A few acres of corn, 
a few bursting pods of cotton, mark the spot where government farms, 
with disinterested benevolence, by means of freed labor ! The sparse 
crops are choked by the growth of weeds. The speculator, with his 
haste for " one crop any how," is despoiling all. The infusion of new 
life, the restoration of the past prosperity which we were promised, is 
sadly evidenced by the ruin of houses and estates, and the appearance 
of a speckled hybrid population — the half-breed bastards born of bar- 
barism, whose mothers have ceased to be slaves with the largest liberty 
to be — worse ! The imperial city of New Orleans, which was the fit- 
ting entrepot for the resources of the great valley of the Mississippi, 
still remains, but alas ! how changed ! The scream of the steam pipe, 
the song of the boatmen, the bustle of the levees, aud the busy throug 
of the marts of commerce are all gone, for order has been established 
where Butler has revelled ! 

Military power is the same to-day which it was under the satra- 
pies of the Orient. There is in it no element of allegiance and no 
resuscitation of nationality, for it is a l^stem of constraint, and does 
not reach the individual except to exasperate and oppress. Our radi- 
cal reasoners have talked glibly of their military governors for rebel- 
lious provinces, when subjugated. But Mr. Sumner has become fright- 
ened at the apparition of Cromwell's Irish bashaws, and favors instead 
the Congressional rule of the conquered provinces. The gentleman from 
Maryland would send a provisional brigadier to the States. Mr. Lincoln 
sets up one-tenth over the nine-tenths, and his own will over all. They 
forget the principle involved. They ignore the history I have given. It 
is not who shall thus govern, but shall this sort of government be allowed 
to any one? " Shall Congress assume jurisdiction of the rebel States?" 
is tlie question of Mr. Sumner. He holds that the States are blasted as 
senseless communities, who have sacrificed their corporate existence, 
which made them living, component members of our Union of States ; 
that the States having abdicated, the right to rule them is transferred to 
Congress. Mr. Lincoln holds that himself and an oligarchy of one-tenth 
shall perform the same function. Suppose, then, Congress governs them ! 



CIVIL WAR. 391 

By what agents will it govern? Men selected by the people of the States? 
Not at all. That is what is sought to he avoided. Wherein, then, 
will such Congressional government differ from the military satraps or 
bashaws selected by the President, or even by the tenth of the people se- 
lected for their anti-slavery oaths ? If the States are obliterated and the 
source of power is centralized at the Federal capital, wherein does such a 
government diifer from the rankest Oriental despotism? What will be 
our fate, with such despotism? History is like Merlin's magic mirror, in 
which we may read our own future. The seeming strength of such a 
system as conquered provinces, or oligarchical States, to take the place of 
the Constitution and local State governments, is its weakness. Such a sys- 
tem is not to be commended for the imitation of Anglo-Saxon people. Be 
assured, Representatives, that the people of America will never accept such 
a system in lieu of their old, any more than they will accept Presidential 
edicts for legislation. State suicide for State resuscitation, or an abolition 
tithe suffrage for the sovereignty of the people ! With such a programme 
of tyranny against the States South, how is it possible to preserve the 
liberties of the people North? Can such an image, part brass and part 
clay, stand? Will not a Government despotic as an Oriental empire to- 
ward one half of the nation, become intolerable and oppressive to the 
other half? Let the experience of the people under the war power an- 
swer. Let the stifling of free speech and free thought, the censorship of 
the telegraph and surveillance of the mails, the arbitrary seizure and im- 
prisonment of opposing partisans, and the military control over ballot- 
boxes, courts, and people answer ! Shall the attempt to restore the States 
thei'efore be given up ? Shall our armies be disbanded in tlie presence of 
rebellious armies? Not at all. 

To restore allegiance and inspire nationality, let the individual rebel 
in arms against us be reached by tlie arm of our soldier, and when a non- 
combatant by the moderation and paternal care of the Government. Let 
the military power of the Confederates be broken. Use those and only 
those severities of war Avhich civilization warrants, and which will make 
the military power of the South feel the power of the nation ; but do not 
place any longer in their hands the armament of despair. They have had 
tliat weapon for over two years. Let our rulers forego their ostracism of 
the misguided citizen. Let an amnesty be tendered which has hope in its 
voice. Give forgiveness to the erring, hope to the desponding, protection 
to the halting, and allay even fancied apprehensions of evil by the measures 
of moderation. Thus, by confiscating confiscation, abolishing abolition, 
and cancelling proclamations, by respecting private property and State 
rights, pi-epare that friendliness which will beget confidence in the individ- 
ual citizen. Thus will minorities be transferred into majorities South, and 
the States discarding the rebel authorities betake themselves to their noi-- 
mal and proper sphere under the old order. If this cannot be done by the 
present rulers, let other rulers be selected. History teaches in vain, if it 
does not contain lessons of moderation in civil wars. How were the feuds 
of the Grecian federation accommodated? How were the civil Avars of 
Rome ended? How were the intestine troubles of England assuaged? 
How was La Vendee pacified by the generous Hoche? How is it ever 
that unity of empire and consentaneity of thought are induced ? How, ex- 



392 EIGHT TEARS IN CONGRESS. 

cept by the practice of that mildness which cares for and does not curse 
the people ? When Athens undertook to succor Mitylene from the Persian 
grasp, a confederacy was formed between them. Athens used her power 
despotically. Mitylene revolted. Athens regrasped her. Perfidy began. 
Destructive malignants — the Jacobins of that day, led by Cleon — insti- 
gated Athens to doom the citizens of Mitylene to death, their women to 
servitude, and their lands to desolation. But another and a better party 
arose, who strove to assuage grievances, prevent rebellion, and save the 
honor and unity of the Republic. "When all hopes of success have van- 
ished," said one of the wiser orators, " your rebellious subjects will never 
be persuaded to return to their duty ; they will seek death in the field 
rather than await it from the hand of the executioner. Gathering cour- 
age from despair, they will either repel your assaults or fall a useless 
prey." Wisdom prevailed, and the glory of the Grecian States remained 
untarnished. 

But a more conspicuous analogy to our own revolution is to be found in 
the Marsian war of Rome. The Marsians claimed the privileges of Rome, 
whose empire they had enlarged and supported by their arms. They 
were the bravest soldiers of the empire, but they Avere denied equal rights 
in the State, which had been raised to eminence by their prowess. This 
war consumed above 300,000 of the youth of Italy. Finally, Rome con- 
quered by reci'uiting her strength from the " Border States," to whom she 
communicated her privileges. The only thing, says the historian, which 
saved Rome, was the fact that the Latin colonies remained faithful ; for 
immediately after the commencement of the war, the Romans made up 
theii* minds to reward them with all the rights of Roman citizens. This 
decree is called the lex Julia. These allies Avere won by something more 
than amnesty of hate. The grandest empire of the past was rescued from 
internal feuds by the wise moderation of its statesmen. 

When again Rome was racked by civil Avar, the Avisest statesman of 
that turbulent and ambitious era, Cicero, summed up the duty of the pa- 
triot in this sentiment, Avhich Ave might ponder with profit : 

" I shall willingly adopt your advice and show every lenity, and use my endeavors to 
conciliate I'ompey. Let ustry it; by these means, we can regain the affections of all peo- 
ple, and render our victory lasting. Let this be a new method of conquering, to fortify 
ourselves with kindness and liberality." 

The closest analogy to our condition is to be found in the English civil 
war beginning in 1640. The English people are our ancestors. They 
had what we haA'c, a similar code of personal freedom, great municipal 
independence, and a popular Parliament. The causes of the war were 
complicated by religious controversy ; but the questions involved concern- 
ing the royal prerogative and the popular privilege are closely allied to our 
struggle. We know how the first Charles lost his head ; how Cromwell's 
iron hand rescued, for a time, England from anarchy. At his death, eleven 
military governments, under Major Generals, like Monk, held almost abso- 
lute sway. The three nations Avere represented in one Parliament, Avhich, 
on CromAvell's death, had been dissolved for indocility. Conspirators had 
been punished Avith death. Confiscations Avere common. Yet a counter 
revolution began. Terror began it. CromAvell's grasp was relaxed. His 
son, wiser than most men in poAver, convoked a Parliament. The army 



CIVIL WAE. 393 

still reigned. It had been corrupted by power. The result of intrigues for 
the general safety was a union of the Royalist and Presbyterian. But be- 
fore the old authority of the Stuarts could be restored, one element was 
wanting. It was supplied. Party vengeance was rampant then as now, 
but the people's representatives considered that they had to decide between 
a new civil war and a restoration. Tiie latter was represented as clement, 
unexacting, prudent, and determined to adapt itself to the manners and 
wants of the time. Then came the famous declaratioQ of Charles II. 
from Breda. It removed all hesitation, and the restoration began. The 
King in that paper declared that he desired to compose the distraction 
and confusion of his kingdom, to assume his ancient rights, and to accord 
to them their ancient liberties, without further " blood-letting." He there- 
fore granted an amnesty to all who would return to their obedience. He 
gave his kingly word that "no crime whatsoever committed against us or 
our royal father shall ever rise in judgment to the least endamagement of 
them, either in their Uves, liberties, or estates ; we desiring and ordaining 
that henceforward all notes of discord, separation, and difference of par- 
ties be abolished." He conjured them to a perfect union for the reset- 
tlement of all I'ights, under a free parliament. When this declaration was 
read in parliament, though it was the false word of a designing t}Tant, yet 
the restoration of the second Charles was voted by acclamation ! It was 
alleged that the declaration not only comprehended the motives but tlie 
conditions of the recall. Perhaps the people's representatives Avere pre- 
cipitate in not first settling conditions by a " free parliament." But the 
amnesty and declaration were none the less powerful. Nor would the 
same sort of declaration from Abraham Lincoln be less powerful to re- 
store the sovereign States to their old allegiance, especially if followed by 
a National Convention and tlie restoration of a pai-ty not unfriendly to the 
entire union of all the States, with their "just rights." No distrust fol- 
lowed this declaration of the English king. He came to England. His 
journey to London was one perpetual fete — one continued shout of rejoic- 
ing ! Faction ceased. History records that Cavaliers were reconciled 
with Roundheads. Exiles showed no resentment in the joy of theu- re- 
turn. A violent reaction against revolution began ; war ceased ; and the 
foundation was then laid for the permanent stability which 1688 gave to 
England. 

On the contrary, what a lesson may we learn from the connection of 
Ireland and England, and the policy of the latter in striving to subjugate 
the former ! From the time of the first and second Charles — under aU 
rules — discontent and warfare has prevailed. The union purchased 
through perfidy and fraud, by appeals to the mercenary motives of men, 
has been a mockery. When Straffox-d ruled Ireland, he placed his cap- 
tains and officers as burgesses in Parliament, who " swayed laetween the 
two parties," and thus began the corruption which ended in Irish subjuga- 
tion. In spite of the eloquence of Grattan and Plunkett, Ireland at 
length became a dependency of the British crown. True, she had been 
despoiled before the union. From the time when the Puritans overran 
Ireland to exterminate and destroy, sending thousands into tropical slav- 
ery, and many thousands into that other country where crime breeds no 
more of its offspring, down to the first of January, sixty-two years ago, 



394: ETGHT TEARS IN CONGRESS. 

when the imperial standard, floating from Dublin Castle, announced to 
Ireland the depth of her degradation, and from that period to the present, 
there has been no vmion, no peace, no justice, no content for Ireland. 
That union, thus misbegotten of force and fravid, was weakness to Eng- 
land and ruin to Ireland. In one rebellion alone, that of 1798, there were 
20,000 loyal lives lost, and 50,000 insurgents, and property worth 
$15,000,000. A conspiracy here, a plot there, a rebellion at the capital, 
a rising at the extremities, public waste, private impoverisliment, general 
corruption, periodical starvation, political turpitude, and national bank- 
ruptcy — these are the features of national thraldom which Ireland presents 
for our warning, when Ave talk of subjugation and confiscation. How 
much better Avould it have been for both countries, had the sagacious ad- 
vice of Sydney Smith been followed, when he said : 

" How easy it is to shed human blood ; how easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is 
our duty to do so, and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle ; how much, in all 
ages, have wounds, and shrieks, and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the 
rulers of mankind. The vigor I love consists in finding out wherein sulyects are ag- 
grieved, in relieving them, in studying the temper and genius of a people, in consulting 
their prejudices, in selecting proper persons to lead and manage them in the laborious, 
watchful, and difficult task of increasing public happiness by allaying each particular dis- 
content." 

The wiser statesmen of England once learned this lesson. They strove 
to apply it to America in the revolution of 1776. Every argument in 
favor of an unrelenting and exterminating policy by the British ministry 
was used and acted upon. In vain Chatham, Burre, and Burke appealed. 
Chatham, though provoked at our contumacy, as we are provoked at the 
conduct of the South, still felt that provocation could no longer be treated 
as such Avhen it came from one iinited province, and Avhen it was sup- 
ported by cleA'en provinces more. Accordingly, in February, 1775, he 
introduced a bill, whose conclusion Avas : "So shall true reconcilement 
avert impending calamity." We know the sequel ; but do we heed the 
teaching? When in 1860 our wiser men strove to avert calamities by 
true reconciliation, Avho prevented ? Who yet stand in the path of recon- 
ciliation, Avith flaming tAvo-edged sAvord, barring all ingress to tlie bless- 
ings of peace? Who clamor yet for a dictatorial regime? Who shout for 
death penalties, outlawries, forfeitures, and all the barbarous schemes of 
vulgar despotism ? Or who, on the other hand, still hope for victory 
without reprisals ; success Avithout the tarnish or ])reach of the Constitu- 
tion ; equality of rights, Avithout irresponsible tyranny ; free opinions 
freely expressed — the only rcAvard Avhich a Union restored can grant, 
worthy of the great sacrifices which the noble soldiers of the Republic 
have made ! 

Let us hfive done with juggling amnesties and ambitious schemes, with 
^ phihanthroj)ic ferocity and enforced elections. Under no such policy, 
pitched in the key-note of the President's proclamation, or chanted in the 
mellifluous tones of the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Davis], can the 
South ever be held in honorable aUiance and harmony. A Government 
inspired lluis would be out of all relations to the States of this Union. It 
would have neither " tlie nerves of sensation wliich convey intelligence to 
the intellect of the body politic, nor the ligaments and muscles which hold 



CIVIL WAE. 395 

its parts together and move them in harmony." It would be as Eussia 
is to rdand, as England to Ireland, the government of one people by an- 
othc)-. It would never succeed with our race. It would never succeed 
with a territory whose configurations are so peculiar and whose interests 
are so varied as ours. 

No citizenship is worth granting to those who dishonor themselves to 
receive it. No common bond of allegiance or nationahty is possible on 
such terms. Mean and degrading conditions which unfit the citizen 
for manly equality are more despicable than rebellion. You cannot expel 
the 2)oison of sedition by adding to its virulence. You cannot draw men 
from crime by stimulating the motive which led to it. Not thus — not 
thus Avere the early insurrections in our country assuaged. True, these 
rebellions were pigmies to this gigantic outbreak, but the principle of their 
settlement is eternal. It is the very gospel of God ; the very love Avhich 
saves mankind. Inspired thus, what might be done if a wise and saga- 
cious Executive should extend the same beneficent policy to the factions 
which are bleeding our beloved land ! 

Will our rulers heed these lessons in time? While they return to the 
purpose of the Avar, as declared by General McClellan, for the sole great 
object of the restoration of the unity of the nation, the preservation of the 
Constitution, and the supremacy of the laws ; and while they conduct it, 
as he declared it should be carried on, in consonance Avith the principles 
of humanity and civilization, abjuring all desire of conquest, all projects 
of revenge, and all schemes of mock philanthropy, let them remember, 
also, that all our labors to rebuild the old fabric Avill fail, unless out of the 
" bi'otherly dissimilitudes " of section and interest, we evoke the spirit of 
fraternity, which has its true similitude in the perfect spirit of Christian 
felloAvship ! 

Pursuing such a course, we may, like the fugitive prophet upon Mount 
Horeb, approach and interrogate Deity itself in our despondency and for 
our deliverance. And though, like him, Ave may hear the roar of the 
wave and the Avhirhvind of war, though Ave may ti-emble amidst the earth- 
quake of its Avrath, and though God may not be in the storm, the Avind, 
or the earthquake ; yet Ave may find Him in the still, small voice — sweet, 
clear, electric, 

" Speaking of peace, speaking of love, 
Speaking as angels speak above," 

whose depth and sweetness are not those of tempestuous force or elemental 
strife, but soft as an angel's lute, or a seraph's song, promising redress 
for Avrong and deliverance from calamity. Horeb stands as a monumental 
lesson to our rulers forever, for it stands amidst the shadoAvs of Sinai — 
speaking the still, small voice of divine conciliation, amidst the thunders 
of the law and the forces of physical nature ! I Avait for that voice to be 
spoken. My soul waiteth for it "more than they that A\'atch for the 
morning ; I say, more than they that Avatch for the moening ! " 



VII. 
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 

NATIONAL CONVENTION AMENDMENTS BY VIRTUE OF STATE KIGHTS 

MADISON, HAMILTON, AND CALHOUN CITED HISTORY OF THE CLAUSE 

IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION JUDGE STOKY's OPINION IR- 
REVOCABLE LAWS — ^USE OF THE POWER TO AMEND AS COMPROMISES IN 

1860 CHECKS AGAINST THE ABUSE OF THE POWER DANGERS IN TIME 

OF' WAR OF RADICAL CHANGES INEXPEDIENCY OF THE AMENDMENT. 

The debate on tlie question of the power to amend the Constitution, 
so as to abolish slavery, was unusually interesting. It was so, because 
there was a direct issue, which gave no room for discursive discussion. 
It illustrated, moreover, what is seldom shown by Congressional debate, a 
progress, during the debate, toward correct opinions. Before the debate 
concluded very few upon either side denied the unlimited power to amend ; 
unlimited, save by the exceptions mentioned, and save by the mode pre- 
scribed in the Constitution. This mode is the only safeguard against un- 
wise amendments. It is ample, however, inasmuch as no amendment 
can be made except by the concurrence of two-thirds of Congress and 
three-fourths of the Legislatures of the States. K these be not sufficient 
guards against unreasonable amendment, what other or better prevention 
have we against violent revolution ? 

The part taken by me in the discussion was in some sort compelled : 
1st, by a desire to be consistent with my previous votes given in 1860-61, 
when amendments concerning slavery were common ; and 2d, by a col- 
loquy in Avhich I engaged, where I committed myself to the doctrine above 
stated. On the 10th of January, 1865, while Mr. Kasson was speaking, 
Mr. Mallory asked whether, by an amendment of the Constitution, we 
could 80 change the government as to convert it into a monarchy, an 
aristocracy, or a despotism. Mr. Kasson avoided the question ; but with 
his permission, I answered it by saying : " I carry the Democratic doc- 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVEET. 397 

trine to such an extent, that I maintain that the people, speaking through 
three-fourtlis of the States, in pursuance of the mode prescribed by the 
Constitution, have the right to amend it in every particular, except the 
two particulars specified in that instrument ; that this includes the right 
to erect a monarchy ; to make, if you please, the King of Dahomey our 
king." This expression excited surprise upon both sides of the House. 
It was animadverted upon by Mr. Pexdleton and by others, who had 
given much study to the question. But as the debate progressed, this 
power to amend became the fixed opinion of a majority, even of those 
who thought it then inexpedient to use the power. Mr. Boutvtell held 
the power to be limited only by the preamble of the Constitution. Mr. 
Thatek, thereupon, argued that that was equivalent to saying there are 
no limitations, which was his 0"\vn position. Mr. Dawes, grasping the 
question comprehensively at once, argued that since the preamble was 
submitted to three-fourths of. the States, they were the law-makers and 
law-expounders, who could as well alter the preamble as any other part 
of the instrument ; that it was competent for them, as a tribunal from 
which there was no appeal, to say that any thing, save the limitations pre- 
scribed by the instrument itself, does or does not contribute to the ends 
set forth in the preamble, even to the extent of permitting a man of 
foreign birth to be chosen President — even the King of Dahomey himself — 
with which Mr. Thayer and others agi-eed. This occurred subsequent 
to my speech, which was delivered on the 12th of January, 1865. 

It was incomprehensible to some, that, admitting the power to 
amend, I did not vote to submit the amendment. I had, as will be per- 
ceived, left myself free to vote for the amendment, in case its passage would 
not interfere with any attempts at negotiation. I had several interviews 
with party friends, at my room, with that view. I was anxious, as a 
Democrat, and with a view to the upbuilding of the party I cherished, 
to drive this question, which had become abstract by the death of slavery 
through powder and ball, from the political arena. Many agreed with 
me, whose votes were recorded with mine against the amendment. I 
fully intended, when I came to the House, at noon of the last day of Jan- 
uary, when the vote was taken, to cast my vote for the amendment ; for I 
had said publicly and privately, tliat if all hope of negotiation had failed, 
and the South stood upon its independence, and the people were freeing 
theu' negroes for soldiers, I would not stop to consider further. The 
amendment would no longer be a block in the path of reconciliation and 
union. I had been advised by high officials, that no further negotiations 
were possible ; that so Mr. Blair, sen., had reported from Eichniond, 
whence he had just come. But on arriving at the hall of the House at 



398 EIGHT TEARS IN CONGEESS. 

half-past twelve, I learned that commissioners were actually waiting to 
be conducted over the lines. These were Messrs. Cabipbell, Hunter, and 
Stephens. I sent to Mr. Ashley to know if this were true. He in- 
quired of Mr. NicoLAY, the President's private secretary, who was pres- 
ent in the hall, who declared that he knew of no such commission. I 
beofo-ed Mr. Ashley, as my vote depended on that fact, to inquire of the 
President. He wrote him a note, to which the President, about half-past 
one o'clock, responded, that he " knew of no such commission or nego- 
tiation." This was signed " A. L." It was shown to me. I however 
made further inquiries, and satisfied myself that either the President was 
mistaken or was ignorant of what was transpiring at General Grant's 
headquarters. It was upon this information, which I obtained from 
other than official sources, that I voted. It proved to be correct informa- 
tion. Whether my vote was correct or not, it was given upon the belief 
that in the negotiations then about to be begun at once, this amendment 
would prove an insurmountable obstacle to peace and union. Weighing 
in one scale the dead body of slavery, which was to be abolished by this 
amendment ; and in the other, peace and union, and these latter, too, 
without slavery — could I do any thing else than doubt the wisdom of an 
amendment which would postpone peace and imperil the Union ? But the 
speech, which I matured in advance of these hurrying events, is the test 
by which my motive and judgment are to be tried. I submit it to the 
reader : 

Mr. Speaker: When we left these halls last year, there was a 
prospect that the adnainistration of the Government would have been 
changed by the election. The political conventions of the two parties met. 
The party of the Administration made this amendment of the Constitution 
a part of their creed. They went before the people claiming the power 
to abolish slavery by constitutional amendment. Nowhere did the oppo- 
site pai'ty take ground against the power ; everywhere they took ground 
against its exercise. The convention which met at Chicago adopted their 
creed. It called for a cessation of hostilities, but with one view, a na- 
tional convention, in order to reestablish union. Not giving up the prin- 
ciples laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 and 
1799, when moved by my colleague [Mr. Long] in the convention, which, 
rightly considered, constituted a main foundation of its political creed, it 
laid them on the table on my own motion, as abstractions unsuited to the 
demands of the agonized country. Regarding peace as the great practical 
need of the hour, the convention waived all other questions to reach that. 
How? By the Constitution, in its fifth article, which provides that a 
national convention shall be called for proposing amendments to the Con- 
stitution. Tliis proposition of the convention was at once our weakness 
and our strength : our weakness when misunderstood by the people, our 
strength when rightly interpreted. My colleague [Mr. Pendleton] ac- 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVEKT. 399 

cepted that platform. In casting my vote for him, I knew that he in- 
dorsed it. He indorses it yet. If he had been elected to that office, 
which he would have graced so well, we might to-day have been appeal- 
ing to Legislatures, North and South, and not in vain to two-thirds of 
them, to call the convention at the will of the people. The North would 
have yielded and the South would not have held back. That my colleague 
and myself well know. In that august assembly the distinguished men 
from both sections would have been present. "What would have been the 
scope of their action ? What the subject of their debates ? Need I ask ? 
It would have been the settlement of all grievances. North and South ; 
questions of debt, doubtless ; questions of gixarantce to State and muni- 
cipal rights, doubtless ; but beyond doubt, this vexata questio of slavery, 
this teterrima causa belli, and the agitations and legislation growing there- 
from. 

Mr. Speaker, I read this morning, with what truth I know not, that a 
commissioner is now in Richmond with the confidence and assent of the 
Administration, meeting, perhaps, a commissioner on the part of the Con- 
federate authorities ; and the rumor is that they have agreed to call a 
national convention. [Sensation.] I know not whether there is any 
thing in it. My friend from New York who sits behind me [Mr. Fer- 
nando Wood] says that there is not, and he is presumed to know more 
on that subject than I do. [Laughter.] If, in the providence of God, 
such a convention were called or were now in session, and this question 
came up in a full representation of all the States, who Avould think of dis- 
puting its power to modify, change, alter, and abolish, either at once or 
gi'adually, by constitutional amendment, the institution of slavery ? Not 
a man. WhUe, therefore, in a state of war, and with nearly half the 
States in default and absent, I may deny the wisdom of acting either by 
the one mode or the other, pointed out for the amendment of the Consti- 
tution in this particular — I will not deny a power so essential to peace, 
safety, and sovereignty. No ingenious refinement or dazzling eloquence 
shall lead me to deny a power which may yet prove our salvation, when 
wisely used. Who upon this side asks me to shut the door in the face of 
such a saving power ? Let him remember that while the power may now 
threaten to destroy, the power to save is forever bound up with it. The 
power that can create, the same can destroy. Under the ribs of death at 
the last moment, this power may be invoked to create the heart and soul 
of union, and that, too, by the array of States in their sovereign capacity, 
as modified by their granted powers. 

Do you tell me that such sovereignty can only guarantee, but cannot 
destroy property, either in man or beast, in land or house ? If a conven- 
tion of States can take jurisdiction to protect property it can to destroy. 
It is admitted that the States individually can do this. If by the Constitu- 
tion they as States, all consenting to it, have provided a mode of doing it, 
what matters it whether it is done by them in their individual capacity or 
in their conventional capacity ? Whenever two-thirds here agree to pro- 
pose amendments and three-fourths shall ratify, either by conventidh or 
Legislature, the proposition is " a part of this Constitution." It is the 
States that do this in the first instance, all according in making the amend- 
ment clause ; again by their convention in proposing ; and agaui by rati- 



400 EIGHT YEAES m CONGRESS. 

f}nng. Therefore I join my colleague in singing hosanna to that principle 
of our government just denounced by the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. 
Smith] as so nefarious — the sovereignty of the States. I see here not 
one monster iron crown, like that of Lombardy, compelling, as from au 
omnipotent sceptre, the subject States, but each of the States making for 
itself a fundamental law or organic compact. Even by this amendatory 
clause the States pluck from their " round of sovereginty " each a crown 
jewel to form and decorate the Federal diadem. All the States, sover- 
eign in their reserved spheres, drop their sceptres before the Federal em- 
blem, in all cases where, as in amendments, the Constitution is declared 
the " supreme law of the land." 

Tell me not that this power is dangerous when left unlimited in the 
Federal head. All power is dangerous. It tends to abuse. This is no 
argument against its existence, only against its exercise. My colleague 
[Mr. C. A. White] holds that the States can make him — now a free 
white man — a slave by local law. Is there a more dangerous power 
when exei-cised ? It is worse than the power to create or destroy property. 
But he admits the power, if its place of lodgment is only local. If, then, 
the States can do this by local law, can they not do it in any other way 
they choose ? They can by the same power make him again a freeman. 
Nay, more ; there may be possibly a greater guarantee in an enlightened 
land against his being made a slave by the votes of the States, all con- 
voked in the mode prescribed by the Constitution, than in the separate 
action of the States unassisted in their organic work by the prudence of 
their brother States. 

My colleague [Mr. C. A. White] says the States are unlimited and 
absolute in their sovereignty, and tlierefore the Federal Government is not 
sovereign. I bid him beware. Where does this doctrine lead? May 
not the States in their unlimited and sovereign convention, deriving their 
powers from the original consent of all, give up portions of their sov- 
ereignty, modify it, as Mr. Calhoun holds, by the amendatory clause? 
May they not thus speak the most potential voice of the people of the 
States in all affairs? It is the people of all the States who consent to 
amending the Constitution, and by a mode which allows two-thirds of 
both Houses to propose the amendment, which is to be sent to the Legis- 
latures for the ratification of three-fourths. First and last ttnd all the 
time, the States are the constituents of the Federal Govei'nment, and as 
such, and by their State action, they can create and they can destroy. I am 
of the State-rights school so far as this question is concerned, and of the 
strictest sect. 

Mr. Fernando Wood. I desire to call the attention of the gen- 
tleman from Ohio to the language of James Madison in the " Federalist " : 

" That useful aUeratwns will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen. 
It was ro(iuisile, therefore, that a mode for introducing them should be provided. The 
mode preferred by the Convention seems to be stamped with every mark of propriety. It 
guards equally against that extreme facility which would render the Constitution too muta- 
ble, i^pd that extreme diniculty wiiich might perpetuate its discovered faults. It more- 
over equally enables tlie (General and the State Governments to originate the amendment 
of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other." 

Again, sir, Hamilton says : 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 401 

" For my own part, I acknowledge a thorough conviction that any amendments which 
may, upon mature consideration, be thought useful, loill be applicable to the organization 
of Uie Government, not to the mass of its powers ; and on this account alone I think there 
is no weight in the observations just stated." 

Mr. Cox. The only comment I make upon the quotations of the 
gentleman from New York is this : Madison in the Convention opposed 
and voted against the proposition of Roger Sherman to except all internal 
police of the States from the amendments of the Constitution. The quo- 
tation is in harmony with his vote. For he only holds, as Judge Story 
holds, that the mode of amendment sufficiently guards the Constitution 
against mutability; and that the "amendment of errors" cannot be 
made without the concurrence of Federal and State Governments, in Con- 
gress and in vState Legislatures. He did not expect that fundamental 
changes would be made — only " alterations ; " but he does not deny that 
there is any limit to the power. This is no authority against the power, 
but an argument for it. Mr. Madison holds to the power because he be- 
lieves it cannot be abused, owing to the restraints placed by the Conven- 
tion upon its exercise. Further, I know, from having read the private 
correspondence of Mr. Madison, published in this city by Mr. McGuire, 
for private distribution, that he always held to the idea that the only mode 
by which a dissolution of the Union, or a secession of the States, could ever 
be legally accomplished was by this organic and all-powerful clause of 
amendment. He laid it down so broadly that it would even cover the re- 
mark I made the other day, considered so extravagant, that we might by 
the fiat of the States even build a monarchy upon the ruins of republican- 
ism. 

As to the quotation from Mr. Hamilton, I do not see its application. 
I am not prepared, without reading it carefully, to make a fitting comment. 
It strikes me that it does not limit the power of amendment. It is rather 
the expression of a strong conviction that all amendments will be and 
ought to be applied to " the organization of the Government, not to the 
mass of its powers," and that none others would be useful. I quite agree 
with the opinion. Now, with all respect, I appeal to my friend from New 
York, who belongs to the strict State-rights school of politics, and even 
stands so perpendicularly that many people believe that he leans back- 
ward, to consider the view of Mr. Calhoun upon this subject. I am sorry 
my friend from Connecticut [Mr. Deming], who has the volume, has not 
brought it here this morning. The quotation will be found in his sixth 
volume, page 36. In 1828 the South Carolina Legislatui-e asked the 
opinion of Mr. Calhoun tipon this and kindred subjects. In that declara- 
tion of political power, drawn up for his State, he teaches that the people 
of that State by adopting the Federal Constitution had modified its origi- 
nal right of sovereignty, and that by its consent in becoming a member 
of the Uniou, that power had been placed in the hands of three-fourths 
of the States, in whom, he said, the highest power known to the Constitu- 
tion exists. I do not give the quotation with that length and that empha- 
sis which belong to it, but I will insert it in my remarks for the edification 
of my friend, who is a most earnest disciple of John C. Calhoun : 

" la order to have a full and clear conception of our institutions it will be proper to 
remark that there is, in our system, a striking contrast between government and sot- 
26 



402 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGRESS. 

ereignty. The separate governments of the several States are vested in their legislative, 
executive, and judicial departments, while the sovereignty resides in the people of the 
several States who created it ; but by an express provision of the Constitution it may be 
amended or changed be three-fourths of the States, and thus each State, by assenting to 
the Constitution with this provision, has modified its original right as a sovereign, of 
making its individual consent necessary to any change in its political condition ; and by 
becoming a member of this Union has placed this important power in the hands of three- 
fourths of the States, in whom the highest power known to the Constitution resides." 

This extract is only strengthened by the context. I call on my friends 
of the State-rights school not to outdo their masters, but if they would 
save the most valuable and most abused principle of our Government, not 
to strain its intent, and thus destroy it altogether. 

I am sustained in my view by the history of the convention which 
framed the Constitution. Was this question considered by the conven- 
tion? It was. In Elliot's Debates, volume ^ve, page 357, it appears 
that General Pinckney "reminded the convention that if the committee 
should fail to insei't some security to the Southern States against an eman- 
cipation of slaves and taxes on imports, he should be bound by his duty to 
his State to vote against their report." Again, when the report was made, 
this clause of amendment came in on the 15th of September. It was dis- 
cussed by Sherman, Morris, Gerry, Mason, and Madison. Mr. Sherman 
did not like the mode proposed, for fear it would, by three-fourths of the 
States, do things fatal to particular States, as abolishing them altogether, 
or depriving them of their equality. Colonel Mason thought it dangerous 
and exceptionable. Mr. Madison defended the present clause. Mr. Sher- 
man moved to annex to the end of the article a further proviso, " that no 
State shall, without its consent, be affected in its internal police, or de- 
prived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." Mr. Madison opposed it. 
It was lost — three to eight. Then Mr. Sherman moved to strike out the 
fifth article altogether. That too failed. The article was then further 
amended by the existing clause, tliat " no State shall be deprived of its 
equal suffrage in the Senate." (Elliot, volume five, page 352.) Thus it 
passed. The argument from contemporary history is therefore conclu- 
sive. The intention of the creator is the best criterion as to the charac- 
ter of the creature. Here we have it, not only implied by the absence 
of an exception, but by the positive disallowance of it by the convention. 
That intention was to limit the amending clause only in two particulars. 
This one before the House is neither of the two. 

My opinion on this matter of construction is drawn from unexception- 
able teaching ; not alone from Judge Story ; not alone from Calhoun. 
No man can teach me a different lesson until I forget the history of the 
Constitution. The platform of my party, and the philosophy of its found- 
ers, teach me the same thing. In the language of that platform of many 
years, adopted last at Cincinnati and Baltimore, I "maintain before the 
world this great moral element in a form of government, springing from 
and upheld by the popular will, which seeks not to palsy the w^ll of the 
coustituent ; " and that is, that the Federal Government is one of limited 
power, derived solely from the Constitution and the grants of power made 
therein ; that its powers ought to be strictly construed ; and if upon such 
construction found therein, to be strictly pursued with all the vigor of 
their constitutional sanctions. Finding; this clause of amendment in the 



CONSTTTUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 403 

Constitution, with no doubt upon its features, I must bow to its supremacy. 
Even though I may regard it as clear and unquestionable, and admit the 
power in its fullest expression, I may yet claim that its exercise is dan- 
gerous and inexpedient. If it were a doubtful power, I would not think of 
exercising it ; but since it is clearly granted, I shall consult my own judg- 
ment upon the merits of the proposed amendment. If, then, it be an exer- 
cise of an admitted power, wby not confine the discussion to proving the 
unwisdom of its exercise ? For two reasons : 

I. I believe that the argument from lack of power to amend, is weaker 
than the argument against its expediency. It is a settled rule of lofic 
that a fallacy, used in a good cause, gives your opponent the advantage of 
apparent success in the conclusion of the argument. I do not propose to 
give this advantage to the advocates of this measure. Believing that the 
power exists, I am bound to follow the example of my colleague [Mr. 
Pendleton], and place my vote upon the reasons which weigh most in 
my judgment. I find that the learned commentator, Judge Story, re- 
gards this power of amendment as both useful and important. His rea- 
sons are radical. He says, page 678 : 

" It is obvious that no human government can ever be perfect ; and that it is impossi- 
ble to foresee or guard against all the exigencies which may, in different ages, require dif- 
ferent adaptations and modifications of powers to suit the various necessities of the peo- 
ple. A Government fore^r changing and changeable, is indeed in a state bordering upon 
anarchy and coufusion.yrA Government which, in its own organization, provides no means 
of change, but assumes to be fixed and unalterable, must after a while become wholly un- 
Buited to the circumstances of the nation ; and it will either degenerate into a despotism, 
or, by the pressure of its inequalities, bring on a revolution. It is wise, therefore, in every 
Goverument, and especially in a repubUc, to provide means for altering and improving the 
fabric of Government as time and experience or the new phases of human ^airs may 
render proper, in order to promote the happiness and safety of the people./The great 
principle to be sought is to make the changes practicable, but not too easy ; to secure due 
deliberation and caution ; and to follow experience rather than to open a way for experi- 
ments suggested by mere speculation or theory." 

Upon this philosophy he considers this power of amendment ; finds in 
its mode of exercise sufficient checks against its abuse ; but even if abused, 
he finds that it is better as a measure of safety than if the powers were 
limited. In his judgment there are no limitations upon its exercise ex- 
cept those specified ; and the claim to abolish the internal policy of a 
State is not an exception. These reasons for the clause of amendment 
are the reasons why the power is so extensive. The mode of amendment 
was thought to be so guarded as to prevent any unrepublican or monarch- 
ical amendments which would substantially change the genius and scope* 
of the federal system of delegated powers. It is, nevertheless, unlimited, 
except in the two particulars specified. 

This power of unlimited amendment is an element of democracy. It 
has been the characteristic of our democratic institutions that our ancestry, 
however prudent and wise, did not tie the hands of the children nor shackle 
their liberties by laws so irrevocable that no mode of change was allowed. 
In our State constitutions this power of amendment has been and is be- 
ing exercised almost every decade. Why ? On the principle of Jeremy 
Bentham (Benthamiana, page 220), that at each point of time the sover- 
eign for the time possesses such means as the nature of the case affords, 



40i EIGHT TEARS IN CONGRESS. 

for making himself acquainted witli the exigencies of his own time. 
With reference to the future he has no such means. Bentham thus argues 
against the transfer of the Govei'nment from those who possess the best 
means to those who possess the least means of information. Shall the 
past century rule the present? No, not unless they are better informed 
or feel more interest in the future generation than their own. Why should 
■we of the nineteenth century tie up the hands of the twentieth? Why 
should the dead forever rule the living? Is a tyranny inexorable because 
it is established in the past? Is a law immutable because made by the 
fathers ? If the law be despotic, who then shall reverse it ? From these gen- 
eral principles I deduce the reason why I choose to argue this amendment 
rather iipon its unwisdom than upon the lack of power to make it. " It 
is only," Mr. Bentham says, " when the law is mischievous that an argu- 
ment of this stamp will be employed to support it. Suppose a law a good 
one, it Avill be supported, not by absurdity and deception, but from its own 
excellency. A declaration that this or that law is immutable, so far from 
being a proper argument to enforce its permanency, is rather a presump- 
tion that such a law has some mischievous tendency." Now, Mr. Speaker, 
if our polity, which leaves all domestic questions to the State, be wise, as 
I think it is — eminently wise — not because it was made in 1787, but be- 
cause it is suited to 1865, and our condition now as Avell as then, why 
weaken the argument for its continuance by discussing its irrevocable na- 
ture? Why not build its defence on its intrinsic excellency? Why not 
then, from this fortification, thunder your rifled artillery? Why, if it be 
so Avise, exhaust your fulminations in trying to prove that we have no 
power to change it in the mode prescribed? It is in the light of these 
democratic truths that I read the fifth article of the Constitution. I con- 
struct my argument upon the perennial beauty, exquisite symmetry, and 
enduring perfection of that system Avhich reserves to the local communities 
their local interests, the very genius of all permanency, the very element 
which secures us against that homogeneity so dreaded by the gentleman 
from New York [Mr. Brooks] ; the happy accord of diverse interests, JE 
pluribus unum, many as the waves in variety, but one as the sea in unity ; 
stars upon one constellated ensign, each differing in glory, but upon the 
field of blue aU emblematic of the harmony of the Federal system, 
springing out of the "brotherly dissimilitudes" of the mingled States! 
It is upon this foundation that I would seek, by reason and not by author- 
ity, to erect the argument for its j)reservation against radical change. 

Does it follow, as my friend from Iowa suggested, that I weaken my 
argument against the amendment because I argue its demerits while ac- 
knowledging the power to amend? I may object to an alteration in my 
house, especially if it disturbs the foundation and general plan ; but must 
I change it fundamentally because I am the proprietor and have the 
power? If it be true that a denial of the power is apt to be regarded as 
an apology for a mischief, do I not strengthen the argument by discussing 
the mischief? The mischief to be apprehended in this instance is not the 
abolition of slavery. It is the abolition by this amendment of our pecu- 
liar form and structure of Government. The argument which I desired 
to hear and meet should be directed to this point. Who cares, sir, 
whether slavery die or live, when the question is, " Shall the form and 



I 



COXSITTDTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 405 

substance of our Government perish?" Show me that the Government 
will perish or be imperilled if this amendment is not carried, and I will 
vote it though all the devils in the South and North should confront me 
with their wrath ! Show me that by votinj^ against it, I facilitate the 
reestablishment of the Government in all its integrity, and my vote shall 
be against it. 

Mr. Kasson. I rise in order to ask the gentleman if at this point, as 
well as anywhere in his argument, he will permit me to call his attention to a 
suggestion he made before, and which seems to have been touched upon 
by his last point more clearly than elsewhere ; and that is the charge that 
the tendency of this amendment is the destruction of the form and sub- 
stance of our Government. The foi-ra of Government we all under- 
stand ; and even he Avill not contend that this amendment changes the 
form. Touching its change of substance, I presume he alludes to the 
charge he made the other day of its effect being a centralization of power. 
Am I right? Then I wish to ask him upon this point — that we may not 
be misled by a misapplication of terms — to explain Avhat he means by 
such centralization. I will say what I understand by it. When I read, 
the other day, an extract from a letter of the original Convention which 
formed the Constitution, and unanimously adopted by them, this phrase 
occurred in it, " Consolidation of the Union," as the great object of the 
framers of that system of government. Objection was taken to it by the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees], but I take it in its length and 
breadth ; and I call the attention of the gentleman from Ohio to the dis- 
tinction between " consolidation " of the Union and the " centralization " 
of the Government. Centralization means when you take the power from 
the State and give it to the United States. But Avhen you take it both 
from the States and from the United States there is not a particle of cen- 
tralization of power. That is what this amendment does. 

Mr. Cox. Before I get through I will meet the statement of the 
gentleman. I would prefer to leave to the States individually and of their 
own separate motion, the question of abolishing slavery, and the inaugura- 
tion of measures to that end. I believe this amendment, if carried out, 
will have a tendency toward consolidating power in the Federal head. 
Whatever it may be termed, I am opposed to compounding powers in the 
Federal Govei-nment. AVhether the powers of the Federal Go\ernment 
be united ia one department, or consolidated in the Union, I would decen- 
tralize such powers, take them from the Federal centre, and distribute 
them among the States and the people. If you consolidate or centralize 
powers here, you endanger by tlie excess of power the substance and form 
itself of our Government. The form will soon change to conform to the 
substance. But I will make that clear as I progress. 

II. Another reason for discussing the question of power is, that it is 
the most valuable gift from the States to the Federal Government, if it bo 
not an express reservation of the power in the States. Perhaps, as lioth 
Federal and State Governments take part in the amendment of the Con- 
stitution, the power to amend is both a reserved and a delegated power. 
Whatever it is, it is so valuable that I cannot surrender it. Not now. 
If ever peace comes, it will be through its exercise, upon this very ques- 
tion of slavery. I regard that Government with a constitution which has 



406 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

DOt the liberty of amendment, as lacking the means of its own conserva- 
tion. Such an amendment is a safety-valve, or governor, upon the en- 
gine of State. A State without it, is in perpetual danger of violent rev- 
olution. Such an amendment is a peaceful, legal, and salutary revolution. 
It is the beauty of our system of written constitutions that, like machines 
with a principle of compensation belonging to them, any irregularity may 
be corrected without breaking the machine or impairing the movement. 
Such powers of change save the State from such terrible red-handed rev- 
olution as that now upon us. Rufus Choate once described, as if he fore- 
saw it, the present revolution " as a great sea lifting itself, with darkened 
sky, and net very imitable thunder ; a tempest Avhicli overturns and suc- 
cessfully resists the existing public authority, arrests the exercise of 
supreme power, introduces by force, or by resort to a primary right of 
nature, a new, paramount authority into the rule of the State." Had this 
bloodless and legal revolution by amendment of our Constitution been 
wisely exercised upon this very subject of slavery, as Crittenden, Douglas, 
ay, even Toombs and Davis, insisted in 1860, we would not be fulfilling 
so sadly the magnificent picture which Choate painted of tempestuous and 
fratricidal strife ! 

Sir, when the statesmen of 1860 sought to exercise tliis power upon 
this subject of slavery, I gave my voice and vote for it. I know nothing 
now, but the fear of being misjudged by partial friends about me, that 
should deter me from again asserting the power Avhich, with my colleague 
[Mr. Pendleton], I then assumed. He bravely resists the popular cur- 
rent to defy its exercise now ; I huixibly do the same. But this I will not 
do, discard my own words and throw aside a once cherished principle of 
government because its present exercise may be an outrage upon the sense 
and patriotism of the country. 

When I first came to this Congress with my colleague, we came under 
the odium of " pro-slavery ; " we came defending the position of Douglas, 
that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, under the Constitu- 
tion, in States and Territories. We claimed non-intervention as both 
wise and constitutional. Again and again, when anti-slavery and pro- 
slavery zealots demanded congressional action, we said, " No, no ; there 
is no power under the Constitution to abolisli it or protect it. It is local, 
not Federal ; State, not national. If you would touch it, either to extend 
or limit, abrogate or institute it, first change the Constitution" Again, 
when discussing questions connected with the power of a State over the 
subject of black immigration, I have denied all power to Congres'^-, to the 
President, to the army, to interfere with tliis subject, because it Avas not 
so written in the Constitution. I said, " Amend that instrument first, if 
you would thus break down the incontestable rights of the State under the 
Constitution in sucli matters." Denying ever the propriety of its exercise, 
I have never heard the power denied. Am I to ignore the power because 
foolish fanatics may rule in its exercise? Mr. Buchanan, in his message 
of December 4, 1860, proposed to save us from war by slavery amend- 
ments, which he called peaceful and constitutional remedies. Who ob- 
jected to the exercise of such remedies for want of power? No one ex- 
cept gentlemen opposite, who declared it to be monstrous and illegal, 
against the laws of God and man, fundamental and irreversible. 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 40T 

Mr. Johnson, of Pennsylvania. I desire to ask the gentleman from 
Ohio a single question at this point. He refers to the message of Presi- 
dent Buchanan. I desire to ask him whether the recommendation of Mr. 
Buchanan did not apply to the question of slavery in the Territories, and 
not at all to the question of slavery in the States? 

Mr. Cox. The recommendation of Mr. Buchanan, which I hold in 
my hand, applies to both. But even if it is only applied to slavery in the 
Territories, the question of slavery was the subject-matter of the amend- 
ment. 

Mr. Johnson, of Pennsylvania. If I recollect aright, at the time, the 
question of the disturbance of slavery in the States was not agitated at all. 
It was denied by the Republican party that they intended in any way 
whatever to interfere with the question of slavery in the States ; and it 
was only the question of slavery in the Territories and beyond tlie limits 
of the States Avhich was agitated in Congress at that time. It is since the 
inauguration of this Administration that the question of the abolition of 
slavery within the States has grown up in the country. 

Mr. Cox. That will do for the gentleman ; because I have the recom- 
mendation of ]Mr. Buchanan upon that subject here. It is more authentic 
than even his good memory. It is as follows : 

" An express recognition of the rights of property in slaves in the Slates where it now 
exists or may hereafter exist." 

As my valued friend will perceive, this was not a question of the 
abolishment of slavery. It was, however, a question which touched, 
through a constitutional amendment, the institution of slavery in the 
States. The gentleman says the recommendation was confined to slavery 
in the Territories, and did not reach that in the States. He wiU perceive 
his mistake. I am not anxious to raise a discussion with my friends upon 
this side of the chamber, but I am entitled to l)e consistent with the rec- 
ord I have made for eight years here. I have always claimed the right 
to pass upon the slavery question by an amendment in pursuance of the 
fifth article of the Constitution. I have sought only to make its exercise 
judicious. The abolitionists only declared, in 1860, against " any express 
recognition of the right of property in man in the States where it now ex- 
ists, or may hereafter exist." Then the abolitionists made the argument 
of my colleagues [Messrs. Ashley and Pendleton]. They denied the 
power. It was and is so easy to argue against the power to do a thing 
which we do not like. When Mr. Buchanan, referring to the amend- 
ment clause, proposed to extend its operation to protect this right in the 
Territories until admitted as States, and a like recognition of the right of 
the master to his escaped slave, who objected? Who? Not my colleague 
[Mr. PendletonJ and myself. For though we might have agreed with 
the decision of the Supreme Court in Dred Scott's case, we desired such 
principles established in the fundamental law. Why? Because it was 
recommended, to use the language of that day, " as an explanatory amend- 
ment which would forever terminate the existing dissensions and i-cstore 
peace and harmony among the States." Those who desired not to ter- 
minate our troubles, or to keep peace and avert war, denied the power to 
enslave or to recognize slavery. This side of the House labored, O how 



408 EIGHT YEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

nobly, but how vainly, to liave the compromises of that dark hour written 
with a pencil of liglit on the organic law, by the unimpeached power of 
amendment, that North and South might dwell in accord forever. 

Again, on the 28th of February, 1861, in the hope of allaying the 
fears of Southern men, a joint resolution was passed with my colleague's 
[Mr. Pendleton's] sanction and vote — yeas 133 to 65 nays — providing 
for an amendment in the mode prescribed by the present joint resolution, 
as follows : 

"Art. 12. No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or 
give to Congress the power to aboUsh or interfere within any State with the domestic 
institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said 
State." 

This was voted for by South and North — Douglas. Crittenden, Pugh, 
Bococke, and Hunter. What did it mean ? I do not ask what was its in- 
tention as a remedial measure : as a bill to quiet title ; as a peace meas- 
ure. It did two things : first, it assumed to speak by amendment on a 
domestic question ; secondly, in the very substance and body of it, it re- 
cognized, Avithout dissent from a single voice, the power to amend by 
abolishing slavery in States, and it sought to checkmate that power by 
adding it to the exceptions of the fifth article. It was as if it said, " Con- 
gress, by the mode prescribed, may propose amendments which shall be 
valid as a part of this Constitution, provided no amendment shall be 
made as to the abolition of and interference with slavery" Truly my col- 
league was right in requiring, as a peace measure, such an expression as 
an exception to the general poAver of amendment. He knew the old maxim 
of construction, " The expression of one thing is the exclusion of another." 
As the Constitution had excluded two subjects from amendment, and had 
failed to exclude the abolition of slavery as sacredly imamendable, it fol- 
lows that the power to abolish Avas given in the general grant. But the 
argument drawn from my colleague's former vote or opinion is not con- 
clusive, except upon him, and only upon him on the frailest of all argu- 
ments, that, once in favor of a thing, he should always be in favor of it. 
I shall be the last to press the ad hominem upon him. I need not recall 
to the House the propositions of Mr. Crittenden or their tenor. In the 
preamble tlieir object is stated. They were intended to allay " dissensions 
concerning the rights and security of the rights of the slaveholding States." 
They proposed to do this by constitutional provisions. Above the latitude 
of 36° 30' slavery was prohibited ; South it was recognized and protected. 
They denied to Congress the right to abolish in the District and in the 
States Avhere the United States had jurisdiction. They proposed to pro- 
tect members of Congress and other Federal officers in bi-inging their 
slaves here, to protect the inter-State slave trade, and to pay for fugitive 
slaves in certain cases. As if this were not enough to show the poAver 
over this sitl)ject by amendment, and because these statesmen of 1860 
knew the power existed to abolish slavery in the States, they provided : 

" No future amendment of the Constitution shall afifect the five preceding articles ; 
nor the third paragraph of the second section of the first article of the Constitution ; nor' 
the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of said Constitution ; and 
no amendment sliall be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or give to Congi'css 
any power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any of the States by whose laws it is, or 
may be, allowed or permitted." 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 409 

Thus they strove to make the lines of slavery irrevocable by amend- 
ment ; to forever preserve the three-fifths representation of slaves and the 
provision for the return of fugitive slaves. Who questioned the power 
then? Not my colleague. Not a man on this side iu Congress then or 
now. Oh ! it was then to be used for sc patriotic purpose ; for salvation, 
and not for destruction. But is it less a power ? Am I to give up the 
sweet shine of tUc sun because it may breed malaria ? Am I to surrender 
the benignant element of fire because it may consume as well as comfort ? 
Am I to be driven by the accidents of war, or the vicissitudes of time, to 
change my opinion of the Constitution and its powers ? Abusits non tollit 
usum, I will cling to the power, and make my argument, when and as I 
choose to make it, against its abuse. 

Again, the Peace Convention sent its proposition to Congress, inhibiting 
any amendment of the Constitution on most of the subjects connected 
with slavery above recited. They were offered in the House on tlic 1st 
of March, 1861. I remember well that I was detained from the House 
by illness. I was not here to vote for them with my colleague [Mr. Pen- 
dleton], but his name is enough. I find it there, asserting these powers 
under the amendment clause — which he now denies — while you, Mr. 
Speaker, together with my colleague [Mr. Ashley], along with tlie seces- 
sionists, treated them as unworthy of your sanction. Why ? Because you 
were not actuated by the genuine patriotism of my colleague before me, 
whose love of the whole country led him to defy the taunts of secession- 
ists and the jeers of abolitionists, and to march boldly up to the exercise of 
the power now asserted by my colleague [Mr. Ashley] in one case and 
denied by my other colleague [Mr. Pendleton] in the other. 

Gentlemen have heard of the Committee of Thirteen. It consisted of 
men of every shade of political opinion : Messrs. Powell, Seward, Colla- 
mer, Bigler, Hunter, Toombs, Davis, Rice, Crittenden, Douglas, Wade, 
Doolittle, and Grimes. They agi'eed upon no plan. But many plans 
were proposed, and all under the amendment clause. Do gentlemen 
tell me that these propositions were unconstitutional? Were they usur- 
pations of power never conceded? Strange that Mr. Hunter, the biogra- 
pher of Calhoun, and Mr. Davis, his follower and disciple, did not discover 
it ! Strange that Mr. Hunter should have proposed that Congress should 
pass no law in relation to slavery, except by the consent of a majority of 
the Senatoi-s and Representatives of the slaveholding and non-slaveholding 
States, thus yielding the power with qualifications ! Can this be yielded 
and yet the power over slavery in the States be above all amendment? 
Or must my colleague take refuge, as he did, in a higher law? Strange 
that Douglas should have proposed to punish conspiracies against slave- 
holders and their property ! Strange that Davis should have proposed, by 
amendment of the Constitution, to recognize slaves as property in transit 
or sojourn ! But why weary the House with these recitals? They prove 
this, that the strictest sect of Southern statesmen acknowledged the power 
by amendment over this subject, and sought to exercise it, and sought 
further by amendment to prevent its exercise when it might impair or 
destroy their institution ! Is my colleague a better State-rights man than 
Jefferson Davis? Or, to drop to the other extreme, does he, nunc pro 
tunc, join my other colleague [Mr. Ashley], who then denied, and yet 



4:10 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

denies the power bj ameudment to establish slavery as iinrepiiblican ? It 
was with some amusement that I listened to my two colleagues [Messrs. 
PENDLETO>f and Ashlet] yesterday. How adroitly the Democratic mem- 
ber thought to catch tlie Republican. How he plied him to admit the 
power to establish slavery ! Hchv shrewdly my colleague on the other 
side evaded ! On the other hand, members on the other side sought to 
entangle my colleague [Mr. Pendleton] with some of his former votes ! 
How both evaded the issues presented in their former positions ! while the 
humble member who now addresses you, sir, sat complacently consistent 
amid the melodramatic performance, ready to admit the power of amend- 
ment unlimited, to change the fundamental law, under the guards and 
modes prescribed, even to the establishment of slavery or a monarchy — of 
entire treedom or entire democrac3% Both of my friends deny this as ex- 
treme and heterodox : the one, because he would have nothing but limited 
repuhlicanism as- the form of our Government ; — that is my Democratic 
colleague who is so republican ; the other, because he would have nothing 
but sweeping democracy as the basis of our Constitution ; — that is my 
Republican colleague who is so democratic. The wishes of each color 
their present arguments as to the power. When slavery is to be guaran- 
teed, my colleague from Cincinnati believes with me in the power to 
amend, and my colleague from Toledo denies it. When it is to be abol- 
ished, my colleague from Toledo believes with me in the power to amend, and 
the other denies it. Both deny the power when slavery is to be affected, and 
both admit it when slavery is to be affected. I have them both on either 
side and each on both eides and both with me. I accept the power in either ' 
ease as they claim it, but go beyond- them both ; for I stand on a principle. 
They are enamored of the power only when one case is absent. Like the 
fond lover of two maidens, they love the one " when the other dear charm- 
er's away." [Laughter.] Yet they are unfaithful to both, because they 
are so attached to either — unfaithful because they are not upon the prin- 
ciple. I can extend to them (as a member from New York used to say 
here in olden times), from the serene Olympian heights of ray cerulean 
consistency, the eternal principle of republicanism and democracy which 
will reconcile them both to duty and the Constitution. [Laughter.] Both 
my colleagues hold, that to concede the j^ower and exercise it in certain 
cases is to subvert the Constitution. If slavery is to be protected, the 
member from Toledo believes the Government destroyed. His only ap- 
peal is to the s\Vord of revolution. Never would he consent that the 
power to amend should include the power to establish slavery in Ohio ; 
never. He would sound the tocsin of inevitable resistance. If slavery 
is to be abolished by tlie same power, the other member blows the trum- 
pet and beats the drum to revolutionary defiance. Both march to the 
same discordant music, when if they would take Calhoun, Story, or their 
own practice and principles, only changing the time of their application, 
they would find in the granted power to amend, an unlimited authority as 
to the matter and only limited as to the mode. I follow no such counsels. 
" You can change, but cannot subvert, by amendment," says my iHend 
before me. Ah ! pray who is to judge of what is subversion and what is 
change? If I leave the question to my colleagues, one will regard the 
guarantee and the other tlie abolition of slavery as subversion and not 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 411 

merely change. My colleague [Mr. Pendleton] derives, unconsciously, 
his language from the South Carolina declaration of independence of De- 
cember 24, 1860. It says : 

" Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that 
article, establishing the executive department, the means of subverting the Constitution 
itself. The sectional combination for the subversion of the Constitution has been aided 
by the elevation of the blacks." 

The other member [Mr. Ashley] regards the denial by South Caro- 
lina of President Lincoln as the legal President as the very essence of 
subversion^ and the denial of franchise to the blacks as subversive of 
republicanism. lie therefore strikes out the word ividlc in his reconstruc- 
tion bills. Where gentlemen so eminent disagree as to what is subversion 
and what is change or amendment, where is the tribunal to decide? I 
answer, in Congress by two-thirds of both Houses, and in the States by 
three-fourths of the Legislatures, and in the intelligent sovereignty of the 
people of each State who have, in limine^ consented to this mode of 
amendment. 

Believing in the power of amendment, I am willing to judge of the 
wisdom of the propositions before I vote to submit them. This discretion 
is a part of the discretion of the Congress. It is one of the checks which 
the minority have against the passion and malice of the majority. Nay, 
more, the checks against the exercise of this power unwisely are threefold : 
first, two-thirds of both Houses must agree to propose amendments ; or 
second, two-thii'ds of the Legislatures must propose a Convention ; and 
third, after all that, the Legislatures or Conventions of three-fourths of 
the States must ratify. Judge Story elaborates this argument, and makes 
it unanswerable as against the dangerous abuse of the power. Thus re- 
stricted, the power of amendment is unlimited. No danger of monarchy ; 
no danger of the King of Dahomey, which startled gentlemen when I used 
his majesty to illustrate my extreme position ; no danger of striking down 
the republican form of government without a contest in which two out 
of three members of both Houses of Congress shall inaugurate the measure, 
and the States, three out of four, are to be consulted for ratification. Am 
I answered that it is undemocratic to allow this power ? I answer, it is 
only undemocratic to disallow it. All the States concede it, and the 
State-rights man is content. All the people in the several States pass 
upon it, and the Democrat is content. Democracy places its trust in the 
intelligence of the people and the sovereignty of Jthe States ; and thus 
trusting, even in the valley of the shadow of national humiliation it fears 
no evil. 

While, then, I concede the power, do I fear that the amendment may 
pass and become a law in spite of all the guards thrown around it ? I do 
not fear any open march toward monarchy or despotism. I fear in time 
of war and the passionate strife it begets that this amendment may radi- 
cally change the Government ; tliat it may by force, fraud, by indirection, 
and by an unfair count of States, be made to change our polity. Be- 
cause such amendments, interfering in home affiiirs by the Federal power, 
tend toward consolidation, I am against them. My colleague [Mr. Pen- 
dleton] himself will admit that an amendment may be made e\en to the 
very system of government, legitimate in its operation, which may do 



412 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGRESS. 

this. You can amend the Constitution as to the distribution of its powers 
so as to place the Judiciary and the Legislature in the hands of the Exec- 
utive. Thus you compound power. When these departments are made 
one — whether that one be legislative, executive, or judicial — as they may 
be by amendment, it is Jefferson's definition of tyranny. Who will doubt 
the power of amendment to do this? And yet who so base as to propose 
it here, or, if proposed, to ratify it? It is by these delusive moral radical 
reforms, reaching into home affairs by the Federal power, that I fear 
most the destruction of our Government. Hence I am jealous of the ex- 
ercise of the power to amend, and especially in this instance. But if the 
people of the States even choose to abuse their power to amend and de- 
stroy their Government, who can say them nay? If they are foolish 
enough to call in a king, or connect religion with State, or declare polyg- 
amy the corner-stone of public liberty, who shall deny them, provided 
they follow the mode they themselves have ordained to make the organic 
law? A gentleman [Mr. Kasson] thought that I conceded away the 
argument against this amendment when I admitted the power. He 
argued that, the power admitted, there was nothing left but to send it to 
the States. If the power exists, am I not, as one of the two-thirds of 
Congress, to consider the wisdom of its submission? Thus only I comply 
with the Constitution. Why require Congress to pass on it' if I am to 
yield my judgment in proposing, to the judgment of the ratifying power? 
Do we come here to play the puppet? I will pursue strictly the power 
given, and if I think best, let the elector in the State or the member of 
the Legislature judge. Congress chooses ; we are sent here for that pur- 
pose by the people ; and they would account us faithless not to judge of 
the proposition in the first instance before we sent it to the States for ap- 
proval. 

When efforts were being made in the winter of 1861 to avert secession 
and war, I had a definite idea of the inexpediency of abolishing slavery in 
the States. So had the Republican members. The whole House, on the 
11th of Febi'uary, 1861, on the motion of Mr. Sherman, "resolved that 
neither the Congress of the United States nor the people or governments 
of the non-slaveholding States have the constitutional right to legislate 
upon or interfere Avith slavery in any of the slaveholding States." This 
was a realBrmation of the Republican platform of 1860. All agreed that 
it would be wi^e to let it alone, as the Constitution gave no right over it. 
But the power to amend the Constitution was not questioned then. The 
graceless inexpediency and suicidal unwisdom of Congressional action only 
Avas affirmed by the resolution. The unconstitutionality of such action 
was declared. Upon that we upon this side have stood in denying aU 
power over the subject by emancipation and confiscation, either by the 
military or civil power, by the executive or the legislative. We trace to 
the breach of this resolution, reathrmed in the Crittenden resolve in July, 
18G1, the prolongation of the war by the division of the North and the 
union of the South. The amendment now proposed is the culmination of 
this suicidal i)olicy. If the steps to it are unsound, what can be said of 
the consununation ? 

While, Ihcrelbre, Mr. Speaker, I have differed with gi'eat diffidence 
from my colleague [Mr. Pendleton] as to the power of amendment, and 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY 413 

have pursued thus far a clifFerent path from his, I shall reach the same 
end ; or rather, my humble way leads into the highway in which we 
shall travel together on the inexpediency and anarchical character of this 
amendment. I join with him, natives as we are both of the free State of 
Ohio, in repelling with honest scorn the imputation that because Ave dis- 
favor this amendment we favor slavery or rebellion. We are not unused 
to such irrelevant and contemptible insinuations. Together, in 1856, we 
came to these halls. We are aU that is left of the Democratic men^bers 
of the thirty-iiftli Congress. 

Mr. Pendleton. And we are not left. 

Mr. Cox. True ; like stormy petrels, tossing upon the angry waves 
of sectional agitation, we are at last overwhelmed in the flood of fanati- 
cism. We are the last roses of the Democratic summer. [Laughter.] 
But, Mr. Speaker, although we may not be upon the same branch, we are 
still together upon the same rose tree. [Laughter.] It would illy be- 
come us, in the close of our career here, to differ upon any thing except 
upon the most vital urgency. In one thing we have never differed, and 
do not now ; we have neither discussed slavery nor encouraged rebellion. 
Certainly we have never favored slavery or its agitation. 

Speaking for myself, shivery is to me the most repugnant of all human 
institutions. No man alive should hold me in slavery ; and if it is my 
business no man, with my consent, shall hold another. Thus I voted in 
1851, in Ohio, with my party, which made the new constitution of my 
own State. I have never defended slavery ; nor has my party. Mem- 
bers have defended it, as the gentleman from New York [Mr. Fernando 
Wood] ; others have attacked it, as the other member [Mr. Odell] on 
my left ; but neither of these has conformed to Democratic practice and 
precedent. When I say tliis, I but speak the tenets of the Democracy as- 
sembled in convention for the States and for the Union. Is it answered 
that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] has this session de- 
fended the institution? That gentleman did not pretend to speak for the 
Democratic party. Indeed he does not profess to speak for it, but rather 
as an old-Hue Whig, having now his views independent of all machines of 
party. The last session he held that slavery Avas dead. Gentlemen 
should not object to his eulogizing the deceased, but by so doing he does 
not intend, nor does he, if he intends, commit any Democrat to his moral 
convictions. 

What I desire is, not that gentlemen should debate the question of 
slavery or anti-slavery, but of the power we have over it, and of the pro- 
priety of its exercise either now or at any time. The gen'^leman fi-om 
Vermont [Mr. Morrill] asks, " Do you gentlemen from the free North 
intend to battle for slavery after the South is ready to abandon it ? " We 
answer, " Prijicipiis obsta." Mr. Davis and his coadjutors may do as 
they please ; we do not battle for slavery nor against it. We cling to the 
system of our Government " as the bond of unity in the past, as the only 
bond of union in the future, the only land lifted above the waters on which 
the ark of Union can be moored. From that ark alone will go out the 
dove blessed of the Spirit, which shall return, bringing in its mouth the 
olive-branch of peace." Not for Jefferson Davis, not for Virginia, but 
for our own States, our own Government, do we stand on the principle of 



414 , EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

self-government over State affairs, and against the use of the power of 
amendment to change that principle. My doctrine is better stated than I 
can state it, in the speech of Judge Thomas, of Massachusetts, from which 
I quote, when he says : 

" Whoever else may falter, I must stand by the Constitution. I am not wise enough 
to build a better. I am not rash enough to experiment on a nation's life. There is to me 
no hope of our country but in this system of many States and one nation, working in 
their respective spheres, as if the divine hand had moulded them and set them in motion. 
To this system the integrity of the States is as essential as that of the central power. 
Their life is one life. A consolidated Government for this vast country would be essen- 
tially a despotic Government, democratic in name, but kept buoyant by corruption and 
efficient by the sword. Desiring the extinction of slavery with my whole mind and heart, 
I watch the working of events with devout gratitude and patience. By no rash act of 
ours, much less any radical change in the Constitution, shall we hasten the desired result. 
If in the pursuit of objects, however humane ; if beguiled by the flatteries of hope or of 
shallow self-conceit ; if impelled by our hatred of treason and desire of vengeance or ret- 
ribution ; if seduced by the ' insidious wiles of foreign influence,' we yield to such change, 
we shall destroy the best hope of freemen and slave, and the best hope of humanity this 
side the grave." 

The Federal system, unamended, embraces three classes of functions : 
first, those concerning the relations of the United States to foreign na- 
tions ; second, those concerning the relations between the States and their 
citizens respectively ; and third, certain powers which, though belonging 
to the same departments of Government, to be useful and effective must 
be general and uniform in their operation throughout the country. The 
effort is now to make the abolition of slavery a function of the national 
Government. If you begin upon this domain, where is the limit to the ex- 
ercise of this plenary amendatory power in domestic affairs ? Should we 
amend the Constitution so as to change the relation of parent and child, 
guardian and ward, husband and wife, the laws of inheritance, the laws 
of legitimacy? Because we have the power must we seize it? Where 
will it end, when once begun? Is it, then, a question of slavery, or is it 
a question of home freedom in home affairs ; a State question in State af- 
fairs ; a .police question, concerning municipal and not Federal institutions ? 
If we may change the relation of the blacks to the Avhites in one respect, 
may we not in another? May we not change the Constitution to give 
them suffrage in States in spite of all State laws to the contrary? Must 
we not amend the Constitution to allow the importation of freed blacks 
into States like Illinois and Indiana? Must we not declare all State laws 
based on their political inequality with the white race null and void ? If 
you begin with this amendment, what laws are to be passed to carry it 
out? Do you not break down, by this amendment, the distinction between 
the spheres of the State and national Governments, which is characteris- 
tic of our system, as old as our Union? If so, are we not asked to change 
the system, rather than to abolish slavery? 

Ilenco, I do not place my suggestions about this measure on any 
ground of tiic immutability of the Constitution, or of our peculiar system. 
I place my vote against it, because the system it would change is a good 
one, made in wisdom and to be perpetuated for the future happiness of the 
people. If the system of internal police over State matters is not of value, 
discard it altogether. Deny to Ohio her right to declare who are born in 
wedlock, and who may inherit estates ; deny to us the right to have our 



CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVEEY. 415 

home courts for home justice ; centralize all power here, in one head, 
and make the federation a despotic tyranny. I may admit the wrong of 
slavery. It may be heinovis in sight of God and man. I may admit the 
power by amendment to abolish it. I am a radical Democrat, and believe 
in amendments of all organic laws in pursuance of the mode prescribed. 
I may admit that such an amendment would impair only for a brief time 
the checks and balances, the very substance and essence of our federative 
system ; and yet I ask you, on the other side, whether, if I believed that 
this amendment would place an impediment, insuperable to the restoration 
of the Union, I ought to vote for it? If I believed that (he rebel author- 
ities would not meat us in convention^ and tvould stand out against the Union 
on their independence, I might consider aneio lohat I ought to do. I have 
no authentic information in that regard. So long as there is a faint hope 
of a returning Union, I will not place obstacles in the path. I will rather 
illuminate, cheer, and clear the pathway to the old homestead. If I be- 
lieved, Mr. Speaker, that peace could be restored with the Union by the 
abolition of slavery, I would vote for it. All I do and all I forbear to do 
is to save our imperilled Government, and restore our priceless Union. 
Show me that that will be the result, and I will vote for your amendment. 
But, as it stands to-day, I believe that this amendment is an obstacle to 
the rehabilitation of the States. So believing, I cannot give my vote for 
it, nor would any honest patriot ask me to give a vote for a measure 
which I believe would bring about a separation or delay the union of the 
States. 

But if it is determined in the South, as it seems to be, that rather than 
fail in independence, slavery shall go, I for one, as a Democrat, shall be 
ready to reconsider my resolution. The party to which I belong loves 
the Union as dearly as the South loves slavery. If they can let slavery 
■go for independence, the Democracy can for the sake of the Union. 
If the South refuse to meet us in convention and abide by its arbitrament, 
then there is no hope for slavery. If the South obtain independence, it 
will be by freedom to the slaves and their enrolment as soldiers. If they 
do not obtain their independence, between the collisions of the belligerents 
the institution will be gone, aud then it matters little what becomes of this 
amendment, so far as its own peculiar subject is concerned. So far as 
the Union slaveholding States are concerned, they are rendering this 
amendment useless. Missouri yesterday almost unanimously voted to 
abolish slavery. Maryland has already done it, whether by force or free- 
dom it is not now my purpose to inquire. Kentucky will be enforced to 
do the same. What remains? Little Delaware. She had ia 1860 
eighteen hundred slaves, and the enlisting agents have mostly sold them 
out to this humanitarian Government for soldiers, costing $150 apiece in 
Delaware, and selling for $1,000 in New York ! Surely Delaware will 
soon be free ! 

It may, with some propriety, be urged that slavery is already dead. It 
has the seeds of speedy dissolution. The blows of war are breaking dowa 
its panting, exhausted body. If, then, as it is said by the gentlemau from 
Vermont [Mr. Morrill], slavery is dead, what is the object of this amend- 
ment? That distinguished gentleman told us the other day tliat, like 
Pharaoh and his hosts, the South had rushed with slavery iuto the lied Sea 



416 EIGHT TEAKS IN CONGKESS. 

of war, and that slavery was destroyed. Well, if that he the case, if 
slavery is dead, Avhere is the necessity for invoking this extraordinary 
power of amendment? My friend from New York [Mr. Odell], who 
also spoke so well in defence of his views, said that although it was dead 
he wished to give it a constitutional burial. I am not much of a biblical 
scholar, but I believe that we have no authentic record of the fact that 
after Pharaoh and his hosts were destroyed in the Red Sea, the children of 
Israel met together upon its shores, in grand convocation, and, after lis- 
tening to Aaron and the other orators, passed resolutions somewhat like 
this amendment, to wit : 

" Resolved, That neither Pharaoh nor his hosts, except as a punishment for crime 
whereof they shall have been duly convicted, shall hereafter exist within the jurisdiction 
of the children of Israel." [Laughter.] 

What would be thought of the children of Israel for passing such a 
resolution after the decease of Pharaoh ? My friend from New York [Mr. 
Odell] belongs to the new and kind dispensation, and would give the 
deceased slavery a constitutional burial. What would have been thought 
of the children of Israel if, after they had fished out Pharaoh's dead body, 
they had proceeded solemnly to give to it a constitutional burial ? [Laugh- 
ter.] Hence this amendment, according to the argument of gentlemen on 
the other side, amounts to nothing. It is a mere brutum fulmen. It is 
only the register, in other words, of what the war power with its blows is 
accomplishing, doy by day. If gentlemen opposite really believed that 
slavery was dead, they would not bring in this amendment. They do not 
believe it. But there are men on that side of the chamber who will not 
favor a restoration of the States iintil this amendment shall have become 
an organic law. Therefore it is that they pertinaciously press this matter, 
even while negotiations are going on for the return of the States to a na- 
tional convention, and for the return of peace and fraternity among the 
States. 

Is it said that this amendment is needed to anticipate the South, and 
thus secure the smiles of civilized Europe? I trim my votes for no such 
delusive gales. The Powers of Europe will not be less eager to dis- 
sever our Republic in the event of abolition by us than now. The philan- 
thropy of Europe is very problematical. Let us take care of ourselves. 
Let us preserve the form and functions, and thus the strength, of our Gov- 
ernment ; and the unity of our States will be as hard to break as the 
ridges of our everlasting mountains ! 

" Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky ; 
Man breaks not the medal when God cuts the die ! " 



YIII. 
THE CABINET IN CONGRESS. 

ITS CONSTITUTIONALITT — THE PRACTICE AND PRECEDENTS — INFORMATION 

DERIVABLE FROM THE ADMISSION OF THE CABINET ABSORPTION OF 

THE POWER OF THE LEGISLATURE BY THE EXECUTIVE ITS EFFECT 

ON STATE RIGHTS TIME OP WAR UNFORTUNATE FOR SUCH A CHANGE 

DANGERS OF INTIMACY BETAVEEN LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE DE- 
PARTMENTS — ^VETO POWER — CUSTOM IN OTHER COUNTRIES — RELATIONS 
OF THE DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS — ^BRITISH CONSTITUTION IN THIS RE- 
SPECT ITS HISTORY ENGLISH HABITS IN PARLIAMENT TITTLEBAT 

TITMOUSE, M. P. A CABINET PICTURE ELEVATION OF PARLIAMENTARY 

ORATORY AND STATESMANSHIP. 

Delivered in the House of Representatives^ January 26, 18G5. 

" Men are Daturally prepense to corruption ; and if he whose will and interest it is to 
corrupt men, be furnished with the means, he will never fail to do it. Power, honors, 
riches, and the pleasures that attend them, are the baits by which men are drawn to pre- 
fer a personal interest before the public good." — Algernon Sidney. 

The House having proceeded to the consideration of the joint resolu- 
tion reported by Mr. Pendleton, to provide that the heads of Executive De- 
partments may occupy seats on the floor of the House of Representatives, 
Mr. Cox said : Mr. Speaker, the House is under obligations to tlie com- 
mittee for presenting this measure. Great good and no harm will come 
from a free and full discussion of the distribution of the powers of the 
Government. In all innovations the burden is upon those who propose 
them to show their utility. The committee have proposed to change the 
machinery of our Government in two ways : first, that the heads of De- 
partments shall have at all times the right to occupy seats and participate 
in debate upon all matters relating to the business of their departments ; 
secondly, that on two days of the week they shall attend the House and 
give information on all questions submitted to them. I propose to discuss 
the question in the following order : First, to answer the report ; second, 
to show the dangers of this innovation. 
27 



il8 EIGHT YEARS m CONGRESS. * 

I. To answer the report. Under this head I consider, first, the con- 
stitutionality of the measure. The committee entertain no doubt on this 
head. There is no provision against it in the Constitution, and it is re- 
garded as part of tliat power by which " each House may determine the 
rules of its proceedings." I will not contest our power to pass the resolu- 
tion. But the discussion of its merits will show that its passage will be 
an infraction of the spirit if not of the letter of the Constitution, which 
provides that no " person holding any office under the United States shall 
be a member of either House during his continuance in office." The same 
reasoning upon which this clause of disqualification is founded should for- 
bid the admission of the Cabinet into Congress, either to debate or answer 
inquiries. I shall show that there is a stronger reason for the rejection 
of this measure than for the rejection of the Cabinet as members. That 
stronger reason is, that in casfe of membership they are liable to expulsion 
and censure, responsible to their constituents, who hold over them the rod 
of public opinion, backed by suffrage ; while in the other case they are 
responsible to no one for their official tenure but the Chief Executive, 
whose subordinates and servants they are. A hundred censures cannot 
move them from their places. So long as they suit the President, they 
can contemn the severest criticism and loudest anathemas of Congress. 
When this clause of disqualification for membership was adopted it met 
with no opposition in the Convention. So says Judge Story. He adds 
further : 

^' It has been deemed by one commentator an admirable provision against venality, 
though not perhaps sufficiently guarded to prevent evasion. And it has been elaborately 
vindicated by another with uncommon earnestness." — 1 Story, p. 310, sec. 440. 

And here it may be proper to say that the committee have invoked 
the wisdom and learning of Judge Story to sustain their views. This is 
a mistake. The committee have quoted only the arguments presented by 
him in favor of that side. He states, with equal point, the arguments 
upon the other, leaving the decision to the judgment of the student. The 
committee have not done justice to the question in thus presenting the 
case. I will supply the omission by citing the omitted portions : 

" The other part of tlie clause, which disquahfies persons liolding any office under the 
United States from being members of either House during tlieir continuation in office, has 
been still more universally applauded ; and has been vindicated upon the highest grounds 
of public policy. It is doubtless founded in a deference to State jealousy and a sincere 
desire to obviate the fears, real or imaginary, that the General Government would obtain 
an undue preference over the State Governments. It has also the strong recommendation 
that it prevents any undue influence from office, either upon the party himself or those 
with whom he is associated in legislative deUberations." 

And after the passage quoted by the committee, he proceeds to say : 

" Such is the reasoning by which many enlightened statesmen have not only been led 
to doubt, but even to deny the value of this constitutional disqualification. And even the 
most strenuous advocates of it are compelled so far to admit its force as to concede that 
the measures of the Executive Government, so far as they fall within the immediate de- 
partment of a particular office, might be more directly and fully explained on the floor of 
the House. Still, however, the reasoning from the British practice has not been deemed 
satisfactory by the public ; and the guard interposed by the Constitution has been re- 
ceived with general approbation, and has been thought to have worked well during our 
experience under the national Government. Indeed, the strongly marked parties in the 



THE CABESfET IN CONGRESS. 419 

British Parliament, and their consequent dissensions, have been ascril)ed to the non-exist- 
ence of any such restraints ; and the progress of the influence of the Crown, and the 
supposed corruptions of legislation, have been by some writers traced back to the same 
original blemish. Whether these inferences are borne out by historical facts is a matter 
upon which different judgments may arrive at different conclusions ; and a work like the 
present is not the proper place to discuss them." — 1 Slory, pp. 313, 314. 

So that we may draw from these citations four reasons against the 
measures proposed by the committee : first, the extreme party dissensions, 
owing to the presence of executive agents in the House ; second, the pro- 
gress of the vmdue influence of the Executive ; third, the corruptions of 
the Legislature ; fourth, a well-grounded jealousy of Federal predomi- 
nance over State Governments. But to me the principal reason is the 
undue and coiTupting influence of such a connection upon both the Cabi- 
net and Congress. If this reasoning be found valid, then the Constitution 
is violated in its essential spirit by the disturbance of that healthful equi- 
librium between the Legislature and Executive which it was designed by 
the framers of the Constitution to avoid. But of these points I will speak 
particularly hereafter. 

Second : The practice and precedents referred to by the committee. 

The committee appeal to legislation and practice — to the law of 1787 
— authorizing the head of the Treasury to make report in person or in 
writing, to either branch. Because of these precedents they regard the 
power as unquestioned. The fact that this law and custom, used in 1789 
by the Departments of State and of the Treasury, and yet unrepealed, has 
fallen into desuetude, is rather evidence that not only has the guard of the 
Constitution been regarded as salutary as against membership, but, by 
" general approbation," against the entree of the Cabinet into the debates 
and deliberation of Congress. At least, as Judge Story says, the reason- 
ing from the British practice has not been deemed satisfactory by the pub- 
lic. In fact, as I shall show, the British experience led to their exclusion 
here. And yet the " rules," say the committee, " now recommended are 
almost identical with those of the British House of Commons." The gen- 
tleman from Vermont [Mr. Morbill] has most thoroughly answered this 
portion of the report. 

Third : As to the influence of the Executive upon the Legislature. 
The committee state that the object of the resolution is to influence legis- 
lation by the Executive. They would recognize that influence and give it 
authority. Assuming that such an influence will, does, and must exist, 
they propose to make it open, olficial, and honorable, instead of secret, un- 
recognized, and liable to abuse. This sort of argument would find its par 
value in an argument like the following : Robbery in the shape of burglary 
will exist. It is all wi-ong, but it exists. Let us recognize the fact, and 
by law make it open, honorable, and authoritative, instead of secret, noc- 
turnal, and liable to be abused. Let us authorize highway robbery as 
something bold and romantic. Or, prostitution exists, secret and danger- 
ous ; let us license and legalize it ; aud the practice, so deleterious when 
secret, will lose its depravity when open. Executive influence upon legis- 
lation is wrong, dangerous, and subversive of freedom. It exists, but is 
now covert and dangerous ; let us make it open, bold, and authoritative, 
and it will be innoxious. 



4:20 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

If the mode were constitutional and it would dignify and purify tlie 
executive influence, I might vote for it. But I cannot see that because 
you increase the opportunities of executive contact with the Legislature 
you diminish the contagion and the fatal corruption as its consequence. 
Because you debar the Cabinet member from a vote, do you prevent his 
influence in the House? If you require open debate, do you stop secret 
intrigue ? Did not Walpole debate and corrupt the House ? Did not the 
younger Pitt defy Parliament even in debate, and coerce the Commons? 
The whipper-in on a division, the manager of the House, were not these 
incident to open and authorized discussion ? The Government felt more 
interest in the result of the vote, because it had been called directly to 
the bar. It stopped at no means to secure its triumph. The threats of 
the third George again and again to leave the island and to place those 
under the royal ban who voted against his measures, was the accompani- 
ment of the fiercest wrangles of Parliament and the most open arraign- 
ment of ministers. I admit that if the influence of the Executive is 
desirable in our legislation, it should be open, declared, and authorized, 
rather than secret, concealed, and imauthorized. But this resolution fa- 
cilitates the secrecy and authorizes the influence which we deprecate and 
should prevent. 

Fourthly : As to the information to be derived from the admission of 
the Cabinet, and the cases cited by the committee. Two objects are sought 
by this measure, say the committee : first, general debate ; second, infor- 
mation from Cabinet ofiicers. Both are included in the second specifica- 
tion. If the object were only information, we have the means provided 
already. Conferences by committees with the Departments furnish one 
medium. The citations appended to the report of the comnaittee show that 
this is almost always a prerequisite to the maturing of measures. In the 
cases cited on pages 11, 12, 13, et seg'.jof the report, the complaints were, 
not that the Departments would not furnish information or recommend 
measures, but that in those particular instances the information was not 
definite or the recommendation made in writing. But the debates in those 
cases show that such information and recommendation were easily ob- 
tained. In the cases of the legal tender and gold bills, the debate brought 
out the letters of the Secretary of the Ti'easury. In the case of the loan 
bill, the instance cited is most unfortunate as an argument for this meas- 
ure. The appearance of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the 
Treasury upon the floor of the House had the effect of subverting the 
judgment of the House. The gentleman from Pennsylvania had moved 
that the interest of the bonds should be paid in currency. It was carried 
by twenty-one majority. When reported to the House, lo ! it was defeated 
59 to 81, a change of forty-two on a question as to which the House were 
informed of the facts, and as to which the executive officers only expressed 
their wish and opinion ! AYhat humiliation ! No undue arguments were 
used. No bribe or corruption is charged. Simply their presence on the 
floor turned the licads of forty-two statesmen ! If their casual visit and 
the expression of a wish without argumentation could work such wonders, 
what sort of a body would we become with the presence of the Cabinet 
here twice a week for information and at all times for debate and influ- 
ence? The other instance cited is senatorial, on tlie bounty question. 



THE aiBINET IN CONGRESS. 421 

The only trouble in that case was, that the chairman of the Military 
Committee had missed seeing the Secretary of War, and failed to possess 
himself of any authentic letter or recommendation of the Department. 
No one doubted but that he mig'it have received the information. The 
point was, not vhat the recommendation was not made, but, as Senator 
Clark said (page 17), the information had not been asked for, and, as 
Senator Grimes said, there had been no action of the Administration on 
the subject, or at least no unity of action. Afterwards, the letter of Mr. 
Stanton was read, and the difficulty properly obviated. So far, then, as 
the Congress requires information and advice from the Departments, they 
can always obtain it, perhaps in over-abundance. If it come not in the 
graces of oratory, it Avill come in the more pithy, and, in this age, more 
useful, and, in this House, indispensable, form of writing and printing. If 
the ordinary reports of th*^ Departments and the answers to resolutions of 
inquiry are not liuilicient, will not these informal interviews of members 
and committee.! Avith the heads of Departments answer every purpose ? If 
the object of the measure is information, we have the media now. If it 
be to influence action, that influence must be for good or evil. If for 
good, always and inevitably, CongTess is utterly inconsequential and insig- 
nificant — a registering body, a contemptible and expensive nonentity, worse 
than the fifth wheel to a coach. For what, sir, is the need of Congress 
if all the recommendations of the Executive are to be invariably followed? 
Better dispense witli all legislation, or make our system conform to that 
cited by the committee from Europe and South America, where, except 
in England (owing to peculiar circumstances hereafter considered), the 
Legislature is the tool of the ministry, as the ministry too often is the tool 
of the monarchy. If the Cabinet influence is generally good and only ex- 
ceptionably vicious, we l.ive the means already of reaching its valuable 
suggestions, and I do not propose to enlarge its sphere of evil. But if the 
influence of the Executive is generally evil, corrupting to both Cabinet 
and Congress, aggrandizing unduly one department of power to the detri- 
ment of another, and consequently to the derangement of our system, and 
if it is only occasionally good, then we are bound not only to prevent but 
to guard with extreme jealousy every attempt to encroach with such influ- 
ence upon the province of the Legislnture. 

In the remarks which I have submitted, I meet the two propositions 
of the committee as elaborated by them : First, that Congress should avail 
itself of the best possible means of inlbrmation in relation to measures ; 
for do we not have at our command all that we could get by the presence 
of the Cabinet in the House? Second, as to the character of the influence 
of the Executive upon the Legislature ; for have I not shown that tliis 
measure will not prevent its being secret, corruptive, or unauthorized? 

Fifthly : A few words as to the argument ah inconvenientL The com- 
mittee somewhat anticipate this objection. They say (page 5) that " it 
has been said that the time of the Secretaries would be so engrossed that 
they could not attend to the discharge of their other duties. If this shall 
prove true, they must liave more assistance." It is answer enough to ap- 
peal to members as to the condition of their own business now before the 
Departments. They are nearly all behind. We must have the ear of 
the heads of Departments ; and if they are compelled to attend here, and 



422 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGKESS. 

take part in debates, what time will they have, even with the aid of the assist- 
ants we have already given, to attend to Department business ? But I leave 
to others the elaboration of this argument. I say nothing now about thek 
appearance and speaking here delaying our own labor. That would ap- 
propriately come under the argumentum ad misericordiam [laughter], for 
it would be intolerably irksome to have their explanations and speeches 
bere on all questions raised. 

II. I might rest the argument here. But I believe this measure is 
fraught Avith gi*eat danger. It is a step toward the absorption of the 
power of Congress by the Executive, and therefore a step not to be coim- 
tenanced either at this time or at any other time. On this head I con- 
sider its effect, first, on State rights. If, as I assume, this measure in- 
ci'eases the executive influence and absorbs the legislative, it tends to ag- 
gTandize and consolidate power in the Federal Executive, and makes the 
array against the States much more formidable, and subtracts from them 
their proper influence in the economy of our Government. Some of the 
committee are looked upon as strong defenders of the reserved rights of 
the States. They look with apprehension on the encroachments of the 
Federal Government upon the ungranted domain of the States. It is for 
such that Judge Story's' argument is emphatic, when he says that "the 
restrictions upon executive connection with the legislature, were founded 
in deference to State jealousy, and a sincere desire to obviate the fears, 
real or imaginary, that the General Government would obtain an undue 
preference over the State Governments." The gentleman from Vermont 
[Mr. Mokrill] has shown the views taken by the earlier statesmen, coin- 
ciding with this view of Judge Story. I need not recite them. The com- 
mittee in their re^iort seem not to have anticipated this argument. It is 
left for the disciples of Hamilton, like the gentleman from Vermont, to de- 
fend State rights. Surely, if you magnify and energize the Federal Ex- 
ecutive by an unequal aggxegation of powers in that office at the expense 
of the Congress, you begin the work of consolidation. You give to power 
new material, until upon the ruins of our old system of a just distribution 
of power, you erect a throne of paramount power whose sovereign occu- 
pant in his supremacy would rob the States of their rights to aggrandize 
his own splendor. This plan, therefore, tends to create the same laws, 
the same kind of dependence, consequently the same notions and the same 
interests, throughout all the country with its diverse interests ; for the 
power it would strengthen is the Executive, which is not, like the Sen- 
ate or the Congress, representative of States and localities, but in a sense 
more nearly representative of the people of the United States. 

Second : The time is unfortunate for such a radical change as that pro- 
posed. Herein lies one of its dangers. It is a time of war. The Ex- 
ecutive in such a time tends to enlarge its powers. Tliis is not altogether 
avoidable. It then calls to its aid all the sophistry of necessity. It is the 
old Satanic plea. With an army of nearly a million, and a patronage of 
$3,000,000 per diem, and with a corps of ambitious men — placemen and 
contractors — hanging about tlie chambers of power, desirous to placate 
the supreme will and to enjoy its favors, is it surprising that in time of 
war the dispensing power should grow colossal, overshadowing all other 
departments and absorbing all other sovereignties ? Yet it is at such a 



THE CABINET JN CONGRESS. 423 

time, that the committee propose a measure which tends to increase the 
Executive. I know that the committee think that its effect will be other- 
wise, and give as a reason that power exercised 02)enly in Congress will 
find its antagonism and barrier in honest deference to public opinion, and 
be restrained in its own disposition to increase. But is that the effect of 
the exercise of power by this Executive ? In the face of a most earnest 
protest from every press and every public man Avho has not slavishly 
bowed to its behests simply because it Avas power ; in spite of the protest 
of nearly two millions of people, the power of the President expands 
boldly, openly, and flagrantly. Patronage is more powerful than logic. 
Necessity crushes the free press and arrests free siieech. Would the 
habeas corpus be abolished, all the restraints of personal freedom be an- 
nulled, and our prisons groan with victims, except in time of war? The 
power which, in time of peace, was a toy for a lady's hand, like the tent of 
the faerie, enlarges in time of war, so that great armies repose beneath its 
folds. When did the executive power in England most overshadow and 
defy public opinion? The Crown augmented when Pitt defied the people 
and their Parliament ; then king and minister became absolute. The 
wise commentator, Thomas Erskine May (Constitutional History, volume 
1, page 82), in drawing his picture of this era of English history, di-aws 
also a conclusion similar to the one which I now declare, when he says : 

" A war is generally favorable to authority by bringing together the people and the 
Government in a common cause and combined exertions. The French war, notwithstand- 
ing its heavy burdens and numerous failures, was popular on account of the principles it 
was supposed to represent ; and the vast expenditure, if it distressed the people, multi- 
plied the patronage of the Crown, afforded a rich harvest for contractors, and made the 
fortunes of farmers and manufacturers by raising the price of every description of pro- 
duce. The ' moneyed class ' rallied round the war minister, bought seats in Parliament 
with their sudden gains, ranged themselves in a strong phalanx behind their leader, 
cheered his speeches, syid voted for him on every division. Their zeal was rewarded with 
peerages, baronetcies, patronage, and all the good things which an inordinate expenditure 
enabled him to dispense. For years opposition in Parliament to a minister thus supported 
was an idle form ; and if beyond its walls the voice of complaint was raised, the arm of 
the law was strong and swift to silence it. To oppose the minister had become high 
treason to the State." 

To oppose the minister in open Parliament, in free debate, in time 
of war, when power found its antagonists and barriers, as it to-day 
finds them here, was accounted high treason ! Yet, say the commit- 
tee, the rules now recommended — now, in time of most gigantic war — 
are almost identical with those of the British House of Commons ! Iden- 
tical, sir, whh a system which not only made war almost perpetual by 
filling the Legislature Avith placemen, pensioners, claqueurs, and contract- 
ors, rewarding them with peerages, baronetcies, patronage, and all the 
good things which come from an inordinate expenditure, but which made 
the opposition a mere form in the Legislature, and stifled it with oppres- 
sion when raised outside of the Legislature ! Is it to this system that tho 
committee would assimilate our OAvn Congress? God forbid ! 

Third : I now consider the dangers of the intimacy between the Ex- 
ecutive and the Legislature. If even the rights of the States were safe, 
and even if this were a time of peace, still I would, as a Democrat, as a 
Republican, never allow the Executive to approach any nearer the Legis- 
lature than is entirely consistent with the movement of each iu their own 



424 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGEESS. 

well-defined circuit. As with nature, so with institutions. Of two plants 
in the vicinity of each other, the fruit of one will lose its peculiar flavor 
and be assimilated to the taste of the other, if that other have the strono-er 
fiber and the richer nutriment. So in the stellar world, the lesser lu- 
minary will, unless restrained, fly toward the greater, to be by it ab- 
sorbed. ' 

The committee say that the framerg^f the Constitution did not intend 
to establish an absolute separation of the legislative and executive de- 
partments. This is true. The separation is not absolute ; if it Avere, 
they could not subsist in the same system. But I affirm that they endeav- 
ored by every guard to allow just as little connection between the parts 
as would enable the Goverment in its entirety to perform its functions. 

The committee instance the veto power to show that there is a con- 
nection between the law-making and law-executing departments. The 
argument proves too much. The veto of the President is the limit of the 
presidential interference, and its exercise is allowed only after the law is 
passed ; and even then, after the Executive has exhausted his reasons for 
the veto, he may be overruled by a vote of two-thirds. If the Executive, 
by his agents of the Cabinet, exert his influence in the making of laws, 
where is the necessity for the veto ? His veto is then an absurdity. So 
Judge Story regards it. The veto is the Executive arm for the defence 
of its own powers. The Legislature is presumed to have no desire to 
favor them. When laws are passed by a Legislature misled by a love 
of power, a spirit of faction, a political impulse, or a persuasive in- 
fluence, local or sectional, which may not reach the Executive, he being 
the representative of the nation in the aggregate, then the veto has its 
use. Says Story, vol. i., page 32 : 

" He will have an opportunity soberly to examine the acts and resolutions passed by 
the Legislature, not having parlalcen of the feelings or comhinations which have procured 
their passage, and thus to correct what a iU sometimes be wrong, from interference as well 
as design." 

His responsibility is independent of Congress. To join his duties 
with law-making is to destroy his responsibility and derange the pro- 
per distribution of powers. Go one step further. Suppose a law of 
great value passed, then vetoed ; nevertheless two-thirds of Congress 
favor it ; but in come the Cabinet, and by threat, bribery, promises of 
patronage, and gifts of honor, the legislative wiU is subordinated : are 
not the people robbed of their fair right in the Legislature ? Voting is 
not the only way of making laws. Voting presupposes influences. Vot- 
ing is but the sign of what has been done. If these influences are reached 
by Cabinet cajolery or honeyed blandishments from the masters of patron- 
age and fountains of honor, the influence is not less, but rather gi'eater, 
than if the Cabinet had the right to vote. Indeed, some Governments 
which allow the ministry to have the entree to the Legislature expressly 
and strangely forbid their presence when the vote comes off. This is the 
case in Brazil, Costa llica, Portugal, and Spain. But what guard is there 
in such cases — for the influence is exerted generally before and not at the 
vote ? Still, even these guards show the jealousy of the Legislature against 
the dominating influences of the Executive, even in such monarchical 
countries. 



THE CABINET IN CONGEESS. 425 

Wliat then are the relations which the three departments of our Gov- 
ernment sustain to each other? IIow arc they intended to act in har- 
mony? Mr. Madison has considered this matter in Nos. 47 and 48 of the 
Federalist. The distinctness and sepai-ation of the three departments is 
by him, as it was by Montesquieu, regarded as an essential precaution in 
favor of liberty. He was careful to show that the several departments of 
power were so distributed and blended in our system as at once to preserve 
symmetry and beauty of form, and to prevent any part of it Irom being 
exposed to the danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of 
other parts. He regarded the accumulation of powers, legislative, execu- 
tive, and judicial, in the same hands, as the very essence of tyranny. 
Hence, if there be any approach toward such accumulation, my argument 
is that there is an approach toward tyranny. If there can be no liberty 
where the Legislature and Executive are one, is not liberty endangered 
when you absorb an essential function or feature of one by the other? 
Says Montesquieu : 

" There can be no liberty when the legislative and executive powers are united in the 
same body or person, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate 
may enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner ; or were tlie power of 
judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed 
to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be legislator. Were it joined to the execu- 
tive, the judge might have all the violence of the oppressor." 

Mr. Madison draws from the several constitutions of the States as then 
existing. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Del- 
aware, Maryland, Virginia, and others, to show that the several depart- 
ments are inhibited from exercising the powers of either of the other 
departments. The language of these early constitutions . yet remains in 
our present constitutions. Not a single State of this large Confederacy 
has ever in its constitutions so departed from the model of the Federal 
Legislature as to allow the membership of the Executive (Gushing, page 
610), or of his aids in administration, or even their presence for debate 
or influence. Massachusetts early declared this fundamental article of 
liberty : 

" That the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial pow- 
ers, or either of them ; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial pow- 
ers, or either of them ; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive 
powers, or either of them." 

The jealousy of uniting one department with another has been carried 
so far, that the departments have been only so far connected and blended 
as to give to each a constitutional control over the other. This is the de- 
gree of separation essential to a free Government. Allow this, and you 
will have no despotic Congress with its many heads ; no Congress depend- 
ent on one head ; you will have no irresponsible judiciary, and no arbi- 
trary Executive. If the Executive can use his appliances at will upon a 
legislature, either by intrigue or debate, then the legislature becomes the 
executive tool ; and although its own powers may expand, yet if used by the 
Executive, the growth of legislative privilege is the increase of the execu- 
tive prerogative. If it be proper to call the Cabinet to the lower House, 
why should not some portion of it be called to the Senate ? Is it because 
the model of the British Constitution has carried away the committee? 



426 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

If it be proper to call the Cabinet to the House, ■why not call in the Pres- 
ident? We have no ministry as in England. The President is responsi- 
ble, and he only. The Cabinet are but the ministers of his will. He can 
dismiss them at pleasure. They have no policy. If it be proper to call 
the Cabinet, -why not the Commander-in-Chief? Why not summon Gen- 
eral Grant to sit here, and to answer the inquiries of civilians in search 
of military news and strategy? Why not? For the reason that all mili- 
tary otiiccrs are kept without the Senate-house. Because they are the 
hands of the Executive, and liberty permits no brute force to overawe or 
dictate. If the commander of the army is the mailed hand of the Execu- 
tive, is not the Secretary of State also his hand gloved in silk? Ah ! Is 
there more danger from the iron hand than the silken glove ? But if it 
be proper to call in the Cabinet, why not call in the Supreme Court, or its 
chief ? Do the committee wish to copy the British precedent, where the 
law lords can advise, though they do not vote with the legislator? "VYliy 
not then admit the Chief Justice? Ask him as to the legality of confisca- 
cation, legal tender, belligerency, and the new questions which this civil 
war is causing? The committee refer us, with a smile, no doubt, from 
its complaisant chaii-man [Mr. Pendleton] to Hayti for our guidance. 
[Laughter.] That precedent was intended for the other side of the House. 
I accept it in all earnestness. In Hayti, the secretary of state and the 
grand judge are, by the constitution, the orators charged with representing 
the executive by oral communication to both houses. Why not send for 
Mr. Chase, along with Mr. Seward, and here let them struggle for the 
next Presidency before the people's Representatives ? 

III. The committee inform us that if the rules be defective, or limit 
too narrowly the right of debate, changes can hereafter be made. They 
take the British House of Commons for their model, and they assert that 
the " rules now recommended are almost identical." If that be the case, 
the changes should involve an entirely new system of accountability among 
the departments of our Government. Indeed, our form of Government 
would then need a radical change. Judge Story says (Commentaries, vol. 
i., page 392) that 

" The whole structure of cir Government is so entirely different, and the elements of 
which it is composed are so dissimilar from that of England, that no argument can be 
drawn from the practice of the latter to assist us in a just arrangement of the executive 
authority." 

In England one branch of Parliament, the Commons, is ostensibly su- 
preme. If not corrupted, or made dependent on the Crown by intimida- 
tion, it is the ruling power of the realm. Though the Crowa may appoint 
the ministry, it is tlie Parliament which dethrones them by a vote of 
" Avant of confidence." There is no responsibility for any act of adminis- 
tration upon the Crown. The sanctity of the Crown forbids it to be 
"wrong. Ministers are toppled over, but the throne remains ; hence the 
real power over the Executive, if not corrupted, is in the Commons. The 
ministry is the fovmtain of honor and patronage in fact, though the Crown 
may be in name ; hence the putrescent corruptions which have made the 
liistory of English legislation so infamous. Not so in this country. We 
have no ministry here, and no premier. The Cabinet have power and do 
advise the President, but he, and not Congress, can alone displace them. 



THE CABINET UST CONGRESS. 427 

Hence in our system the President has the power of the Crown and the 
ministry both, and is above tlie reach of the Commons or the Congress. 
In Enghand the Queen only has the power to name the ministry ; the Par- 
liament has the power to direct its policy and compel its resiirnation ; yet 
this measure would enhance the power of tlie President, making him not 
only monarch and ministry, but potential in the Legislature. Add to this 
his power to appoint judges, and the tendency is to unite all functions in 
one, which, as I have said, is the definition of tyranny. If the committee 
would then assimilate our practice with English rules, let them alter the 
Constitution, and require the Cabinet to be responsible to Congress, and 
the President and his Cabinet to abdicate Avhen his policy is condemned. 
When you do this, do you not change the very essence of our Govern- 
ment? The President represents the aggregate people; Congress repre- 
sents States in the Senate, and the people of the States in the House. 
The President is elected for four years. We take him for better or for 
worse. We may have a Congress in opposition to his policy for four 
years ; and nothing we can do will prevent it, unless we, by usurpation 
and by a corrupt judiciary, intrench on his powers, or he, by intrigue, 
usurpation, or obsequious judges, is enabled to rob Congress of its powers. 
He may veto laws and appoint judges ; that is the limit of his control over 
the Legislature and the judiciary. If his agents approach the fountain, 
and there at its source endeavor to influence the making of law, does he 
not become an intermeddler ? Whether he does this by his military force 
or his cunning management, it amoimts to the same thing. Wisely, there- 
fore, our fathers, looking at English history at a time when a corrupt and 
imbecile ministry were illustrating how easy it was for a stubborn kiug to 
rule a subservient Parliament by the presence of a pliant minister or a 
strong will, forbade the membership of the Administration in the House, 
and for a stronger reason should have forbidden their presence there. 
They saw, as an old wi-iter says (Craftsman, No. 440), "the king and 
his council, by means of liveries and retainers, bring the whole kingdom to 
be of his livery ;" or, as Lord Bolingbroke said to Walpole, they made the 
Parliament like slaves in a galley, united by their chains and tugging the 
oar together at the sound of the ministerial whistle. Seeing this in Eng- 
land, as the very cause of their own troubles with the parent country, they 
were jealous of such influences here. They may not have distrusted the 
first Presidents ; but they would not allow an opportunity for the invasion 
of their own privileges or the public liberties. It was not the attack they 
feared from the first Executives which led them to keep the Administra- 
tion aloof from the Legislature, but they would not allow the breach, how- 
ever small, in the rampart, through which an attack at some time might 
be made. 

Tliis principle, together with the English practice, leads me, Mr. 
Speaker, to be jealous of our privileges and powers. Indeed, sir, I am 
not particularly enamored of any thing English now, I do not like Eng- 
lish delight over our troubles ; English cannon when found in Fort 
Fisher ; English ships of war destroying our commerce under a hostile 
flag ; Englisli recognition of belligerency. All that is admirable in the 
En'glish manners, literature, and laws I love and cherish, but this system 
of the committee is neither admirable nor desirable. 



428 EIGHT TEAKS EST CONGEESS. 

If there is one feature in English history more marked than another, 
it is the constant conflict of centuries between the kingly prerogative and 
the parliamentaiy privilege. In the earlier times of the Plantagenets the 
motto obtained, that to be royal is to be loyal ; the will of the king to be 
the will of the law : " Que ve,ut le roy, ce veut la loy" And although 
under the earlier kings, especially those most destitute of principle, the 
liberty of the people in the Parliament received its most efficacious sup- 
port ; although Magna Charta came in John's rule, and Habeas Corpus 
in the time of the second Charles, yet the royal prerogative was broken 
by its inordinate strain by such monarchs, and liberty gained. It was 
enough for the king to be the fountain of honor and patronage, of pardon 
and power, generalissimo of the army, and source of all foreign embassies 
and treaties. The Commons, therefore, in early times, united with the 
people and the nobility against the power of the Crown ; and from having 
been called from boroughs and towns originally to provide only for the 
wants of the king (De Lolme, volume second, page 511), they became so 
powerful that ministers fell before their votes and voice. Upon their fiat 
hung the lives even of the ministers. The king himself was supposed by 
a fiction always to be present in Parliament, really or by representatives ; 
and even he was made liable, on a memorable occasion, to the power of 
the Commons by impeachment and death. But at last the popidar ele- 
ment by the Revolution of 1688 became paramount. At least then began 
the struggle, which, after great convulsions, fixed the Crown, througli the 
ministers, as the instruments of and amenable to Parliament. But this 
cannot be so in this Government, for the simple reason that the Congress 
has no control over the Cabinet. The extent and duration of the Exec- 
utive, as to time and power, is clearly defined in our written Constitution. 
Therefore no analogies can be drawn from English precedents, except 
those which show how power tends to increase in the Executive or minis- 
try whenever it has the opportunity to use its appliances, or which show 
that the temptation to corruption is apt to be embraced when the object is 
near and the lure enticing. In illustrating this part of my argument, my 
only embarrassment is iu the opulence of the illustrations from English 
history. I do not select a few cases because they are so glaring. Nor do 
I value in an argument a few exceptional cases ; non ego paucis offendar 
maculis. Erom the very beginning of the English Government until now, 
laws were passed to regulate elections and prevent the kingly influence 
upon the Commons. In the time of the Lancaster kings such statutes were 
common. "What else," asks Bolingbroke (Craftsman, No. 440), "do 
all these resolutions, declarations, and acts mean from the time of Richard 
II. to these days, against the influence of the Crown on the elections or 
on the members of Parliament ? " He answers by saying, that a prince 
may govern according to his arbitrary will, or that of his more arbitrary 
minister, as absohitdy and much more securely with than without the 
concurrence of a Parliament. He can do this in two ways : either by 
the strain of his prerogative, or by the con-uption of the Commons ; and 
the instrument for both means, as shown by English history, has been an 
obse(iuious, audacious, or corrupt ministry sitting in Parliament. In the 
earlier eras of English history, the stretch of the prerogative was the 
means used to overawe Parliaments. Not alone by the threat upon mem- 



THE CABINET IN CONGRESS. 429 

bers, but by acts of imprisonment and decapitation ; not alone by the 
threat but by the act of dishonor and sequestration, were the annals of 
Parliament sullied. In later times, after the Revolution of 1688, the 
civil list had increased, and with it the means of corruption ; and not 
alone by indirect bribes in stocks, lotteries, pensions, places, and honors, 
but by a wanton lavishness of douceurs, du-cctly <r[vea to members, the 
German princes on the English throne, and their ministers, controlled 
the Commons. This corruption extended then, as it docs now, from the 
House to the hustings, from the Parliament to the people, until the Eng- 
lish Parliament reeked, and in spite of all reform bills and bribery acts, 
yet reeks, with the astounding rottenness of its representatives and elect- 
ors. Tbe only reason why in earlier times, as in the sixteenth century, 
this same corruption did not exist, is given by Ilallam (volume three, 
page 43), that there did not then exist the means of that splendid corrup- 
tion which emulated the Crassi and Luculli of Rome. Whereas, in 1571, 
a member bought his seat for Westbury for £4 ; an election in York, in 
the eighteenth century, cost £150,000 ! The elections were controlled by 
the officers of the Government. It became necessary, to save the Consti- 
tution, to reform these abuses, and the English statute book groans with 
laws against placemen sitting in Parliament, against revenue officers 
having the right of suffrage, the disfranchisement of boroughs, and penalty 
on members for bribery. The Revolution of 1688 prevented the destruc- 
tion of the English system ; for it limited the prerogative. It declared 
against making kings independent of Parliament by prerogative, but it 
substituted therefor a system which made Parliament dependent on kings by 
corruption. Which was the easiest mode to destroy liberty, it is not for us to 
ask at a time when the executive influence not only has been exceeding its 
constitutional limit in this country, but when the means of corruption are 
as a thousand to one in this country compared with England. Indeed, in 
the time of Walpole it w^as contended that the Parliament sliould corruptly 
depend on the Crown, as the expedient to supply the want of power denied 
to the Crown by the Revolution. Even so good a moralist as Paley justi- 
fied the use of patronage to influence Parliament. 

In glancing at this history, I will arrange a few salient illustrations 
under these heads : first, the attempts by executive intimidation and 
power to overawe the Commons ; second, by corruption of the people and 
of the Commons to create a dependency on their part upon the Crown. 

First : Most of the valuable privileges enjoyed by the House of Com- 
mons is due, not to the pre'^ence of the ministry, nor to the monarchical 
part of the Constitution, but to the vigilant perseverance of the tribunes of 
the people in spite of all the threats and penalties of the Crown. As early 
as Edward III., it was customary to imprison members for freedom of 
speech ; but this, like other grievances, was redressed in time, not because 
the ministry were present to aid, but because the Commons protested, and 
accompanied their protests Avith intimations that if their protests were not 
heeded, supplies to the king would be wanting. The first English Coun- 
cil was the Witenagemote. It lost its place in the government by the 
ambition of the monarch, who designed to make all. his vassals, and none 
his equals, in the powers of the State. After the king began to need mil- 
itary service and taxation he called his Parliament, but used and disused 



430 EIGHT TEAES IN CONGRESS. 

it at pleasure. It was slavishly submissive. When the Tudors as- 
cended the throne, the contest began which has ended in this reign of 
Queen Victoria, in the subordination of nearly all executive power to the 
ministry, or the Parliament, which can overturn the ministry. Henry 
VIII. occasionally used his Parliaments, but used them through the per- 
sonal interference of Cardinal Wolsey in the House of Commons (Smytlie, 
vol. i., p. 345). His son, Edward VI., by the influence of a bad minister 
seeking control of Parliament, issued a proclamation to influence members 
of Parliament ; a precedent followed afterward by Mary and by James I., 
and which in this country, if the Executive were more nearly connected 
with Congress, Avould follow every two years, and certainly every four 
years, especially in time of civil war. 

Then followed Elizabeth's reign. Great men adorned her court ; but 
around her crouched a submissive Parliament. Its members were her 
knights, and not her statesmen. She had her ministry subservient to her 
female caprices ; and they " touched " her Parliament, and it bowed as to 
an Oriental princess. It is a relief to find, what we so rarely find in our 
own times among the Puritans here, that old Puritan parliamentarian, 
Peter Wentworth, standing out of this gloom by his conspicuous intre- 
pidity ; the forerunner of the Hampdens and Pyms of a later day. AVhen 
Elizabeth strove to stop legislation by the queen's pleasure, on religious 
matters, he spoke as follows : 

" We are assembled to make, or abrogate, such laws as may be the chiefest surety, 
safe keeping, aud enrichmeut of this uoble realm of England. I do think it expedient to 
open the commodities (advantages) that grow to the prince and the whole State, by free 
speech used in this place." 

This be proceeded to do on seven different grounds, and he concluded : 

" That in this House, which is termed a place of free speech, there is nothing so neces- 
sary for the preservation of the Prince and State as free speech ; and without this, it is a 
scorn and mockery to call it a Parliament-house, for in truth it is none, but a very school 
of flattery and dissimulation, and so a fit place to serve the devil and his angels in, and 
not to glorify God and benefit the Commonwealth." 

The House it seems, out of a reverent regard to her Majesty's honor, 
stopped him before he had fully finished ; and " he was sequestered the 
House for the said speech." Finally he was sent to prison ; but we read 
of him, years afterwards, questioning with rare courage the dispensing 
power which lost James II. his crown, and should have lost Mr. Lincoln 
his election. It was true of this and subsequent reigns, as Dr. Burnet 
recorded, that he that would go about to debate her Majesty's prerogative, 
had " need walk warily." 

The reign of the Stuarts is an era of conflicts, signalized by the State craft 
of the kings, and the protests of the Commons. The first Stuart, James 
I., had invaded even the House, sent some of its members to the Tower, 
and contemplated the beheading of others. He had even torn its pro- 
ceedings from the journals. Prerogative went so far, that in the time of 
the first Charles no Parliament met for twelve years. Irregular levies of 
money and men, and the severities of the star chamber and high commis- 
sion, drove the people to exile in America, and to despair of their liberties. 
These institutions were the subservient Parliaments of the time — all its 
members being the tools of tyranny. At last a minister proposed the ship 



THE CABINET IN CONGEESS. 431 

money tax. Hampden opposed ; then came the reaction and tlic rev- 
olution. The Parliament conquered ; only to be in turn driven from its 
place by the Protector, because its debates were disagreeable. AVhen 
the restoration came, the " healing Parliament " met, and the king was 
its suitor, but not long a suitor. His ministers were in Parliament. 
The republican element was weeded out. It would have been worse, but 
that the profusion of Charles II. in his pleasures was so gi-eat that " no 
minister could find sums sufficient to buy a Parliament. He stood, there- 
fore, on his prerogative strained as far as he durst, and made all the use 
of it he could." (Craftsman, No. 442.) He even depended on foreign 
gold to bribe his Parliament and pamper his mistresses. The House con- 
tinued eighteen years, a large number of members practised on, and a 
large number notoriously bribed. When a new Parliament was called, 
its disposition was so sordid and the flatteries around the throne so detest- 
able, that the English historian blushes as he records its slavish submis- 
sion. Russell and Sidney shine out of this time only by the halo around 
their martyr brows. When Charles died, his brother James II. added to 
this corruption another strain of the prerogative, and a degree of bigotry 
which was wholly his own. The Parliament of his time had been man- 
aged, both at the election and when it met ; and so successfully man- 
aged, that when James looked over the list of returns, he declared that 
there were not more than forty names which he could have wished not 
there. It sat a year. A few brave words from Coke of Derby, and he 
was sent to the Tower for undutiful reflection on the king. Then came 
another reaction. It was sudden, and the revolution of 1G88 was accom- 
plished. 

Secondly : From that time, the influence of the Crown upon the Par- 
liament has been most apparent and deleterious by their corrupt depen- 
dency on each other.. One of the first grievances to be remedied by the 
new dynasty was the purification of the Commons. A place bill was 
brought in. By it all members of the House of Commons were incapa- 
citated from holding places of trust and profit. This was the model of 
our constitutional clause. It was passed in Parliament finally, but rejects 
ed by the king's veto. Mr. Hallam (volume iii., page 187) says : 

" The baneful system of rendering the Parliament subservient to the Administration, 
either by offices and pensions held at pleasure, or by more clandestine corruption, had not 
ceased with the house of Stuart. William, not long after his accession, fell into the worst 
part of this management, which it was difficult to prevent, and, according to the practice 
of Charles's reign, induced by secret bribes the leaders of parUamentary opposition to 
betray their cause on particular questions." 

Secret service money was proved to have been used among members. 
Hallam enumerates the facts, and from them it will appear why, even 
after the place bill failed, a check was still put upon the number and cpial- 
ity of placemen in the lower House. The proper remedy then was the 
banishment,' as our American ancestors provided, of all the servants of 
the Executive from the legislative councils of the nation. One thing, 
however, they did establish in 1694 ; the board of revenue were incapaci- 
tated from sitting in the House. In 1699 this law was extended.^ In 
1700, by the act of settlement, all officers were excluded. In 1706 this 
law was repealed, and but for this repeal, England to-day would exclude 



432 EIGHT YEAE8 IN CONGEESS. 

the Cabinet altogether ; but she preserved the principle and limited its ex- 
tension. One provision she did establish, which to-day operates against 
an overwhelming influence of the ministry (Hallam, volume iii., page 191). 
Every member accepting an office must vacate, and a new election must 
be had. She excluded pensioners. These provisions, says De Lolme 
(volume i., page 476, &c.), originated from the continued corruption of 
Parliament. An " act of security," limiting the number of persons in 
oflttce eligible to Parliament, was enacted. I refer to these precautions in 
favor of liberty now as the argument against the present measure. What 
was reasonable then, so long as human nature remains the same, is rea- 
sonable now. As De Lolme writes : 

" It is impossible to question the policy of these enactments. In truth, he who has 
tasted the sweets of dishonest and clandestine lucre would, in the words of the poet, be 
no more capable afterward of abstaining from it than a dog from his greasy offal." 

Notwithstanding all these precautions, so long as the ministry re- 
mained in the Commons, corruption was paramount. In the time of 
Anne, in 1712, bills were again brought in still further limiting the num- 
ber of officers of Government who could sit in Parliament. Fifty was 
pi'oposed. Even that failed in the House of Lords. The principle of 
preserving the influence of the Crown unhappily prevailed. The same 
arguments now used for this bill were used then. The same indifference 
to personal probity and political integrity are observable. Well might 
Queen Anne, therefore, dissolve one of her Parliaments. It was her pleasure 
to admit of no debate. Out of this right arose the golden dawn of Wal- 
pole ! The forecast of the wise statesmen of England had been exerted 
in vain. In vain had place bills been again proposed ; in vain were elec- 
tions contested for bribery ; in vain were motions to retrench pensions. 
George II. denounced all such bills as " villanous ; " and his ministry did 
not scruple to send Tories to the Tower for contumacious debate. A bishop 
declared that an independent House of Commons was as inconsistent as 
an independent king. Truly was it exemplified ; for the two powers be- 
came dependent on each other, made so by the golden mean of the min- 
ister who so long held his tainted sway. Doubtless Walpole had his 
amiable qualities. Some one says that he would have been held worthy of 
his high station liad he never possessed it. The lines applied to him are 
well known : 

" Seen him I have, but in his happier hour 
Of social converse, ill exchanged for power ; 
Seen him, uncumbered by the venal tribe. 
Smile without art, and win without a bribe." 

Doubtless he used the arts of persuasion. His continuance in power 
is attributable not a little to this resource, but mostly to his mercenary 
management. He rose from personal merit. He managed the king as 
well as the Commons. Places, pensions, bribes, were profusely strewn 
along the aisles of St. Stephen's ; and though partially hidden from the 
eyes of contemporaries by the burning of the papers of the minister, yet as 
Smollett reveals (volume ii., page 311), the guilty minister quarrelling 
with a confederate, Mr. Stanhope, revealed their practice of selling places 
and reversions. A member standing up, said : " Since they had by mis- 
chance discovered their nakedness, the other members ought, according to 



THE CABINET IN CONGEESS. 433 

the custom of the East, to turn their backs upon them." In his History, 
Mr. May (page 300) says that the majority of" the House of Commons 
was long retained in subjection to this minister by an organized system of 
corruption. This system was continued until the reign of George H. ; and 
Lord Bute secured the aid of Walpole's agent to keep up the management 
of the Commons during the early part of the reign of George IH. The 
war with America never would have been undertaken or upheld but for 
the purchase of Parliament by Lord North. Shops were opened for mem- 
bers. Some years £41,000 of the secret service were used to purchase 
votes. Stock-jobbing and lotteries were substituted for direct bribes. 
Not until Mr. Pitt came into office was there a stop put to these infamies, 
and then only for a time. Contractors, nabobs, gold — tliese are the words 
upon which the changes were rung by Burke and others pleading for re- 
form in the English Parliament. But Parliament strove in vain ; the age 
was corrupted by war and avarice ; it was a time 

" When infamous Venality, grown bold, 
Wrote on its bosom, ' To be let or sold.' " 

It was from this source that good men predicted the ruin of English 
liberty. Montesquieu said : " 11 phrira lorsque la puissance legislative sera 
phcs corrumpue que V executive." But for the lash of the press, gradually 
freeing itself from the toils of the time, and the public opinion which was 
enfranchised by the French Revolution, the admission of the public to the 
Commons, and the publicity of the debates, the English constitution would 
either have been destroyed, or revolution would have changed its features 
into something like our own. Of all the instruments of despotism a paid 
Parliament is the worst, just as the corruption of the best things are the 
worst. " Tyranny," said Sydney Smith, speaking of this time, "' is worst 
where a majority of a popular assembly are hired, and a few bold and able 
men by their brave speeches make the people believe they are free." The 
secret influence of the Crown was at work through the influence of the 
younger Pitt all through the French wars, and was sapping by its corrup- 
tion the foundation of English liberty. From that time till the last reform 
bill of 1860 efforts have been made to lessen the corruption and bribery 
of the English elections and Parliaments, but in vain. So long as men 
are moved by their interests, so long will places, honors, emoluments, con- 
tracts, and power feed the servile horde of mercenaries, who will buy, out 
of the labor of the oppressed and tax-ridden people, the veiy otfices of leg- 
islation to prostitute them to power. 

I do not detain the House with the specific modes by which the Crown 
or the ministry have ruled England through a subordinated Parliament. 
Sometimes they made the Speaker ; sometimes shut the opposition mem- 
bers in the Tower ; sometimes the king himself, as George III. at Ports- 
mouth, interfered to secure the election of his friends ; sometimes the list 
of Court favorites was foisted in upon boroughs against the will of the 
people, as in Wilkes's case ; sometimes, as in the case of Colonels Barre 
and A'Court, officers were deprived of their commands for their votes in 
Parliament against taxing America. Lord Shelburne was dismissed from 
his office as aide-de-camp to his Majesty, Mr. Fitzherbert from the Board 
of Trade, and General Conway from bis office of Groom of the Bedcham- 
28 



434 EIGHT TEARS IN CONGEESS. 

bcr, for the same reason. James I. had committed Sir Edwin Sandys as 
Charles I. had committed Selden and others to prison, and the Georges 
had punislied all prominent opponents so far as they could, for their con- 
duct in Parliament. Everywhere in English politics do we hud not only 
open but secret interior Cabinet influence at work to assail the Parliament 
and assist the monarch. Even the elder Pitt bowed so low to the king that 
he lost the dignity of his character in his obeisance, while he shed tears at 
the kindness of the king in making him Lord Chatham, which killed his 
influence. In the time of George III. the king staked his personal credit 
upon the success of his measures, and regarded opposition to his ministers 
as an act of disloyalty, and their defeat as an affront to himself. (May, 
page 49.) During this reign, when England lost so much, Lord North sup- 
ported the king against the aristocracy, the Parliament against the people, 
and the nation against the colonies. It Avas this influence which Mr. 
Bixrke called " the perennial spring of all prodigality and of all disorder ; 
which loads us with millions of debt ; which takes vigor from our arms, 
wisdom from our, councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from 
the most venerable parts of our constitution." Complaints of this influ- 
ence did not stop with the death or insanity of George III. England 
learned nothing. In the subsequent reign of George IV. Mr. Brougham 
denounced the same influences of the Crown. To it may justly be attrib- 
uted the long discussions year after year as to reforms and Catholic eman- 
cipation, which in our system would never have been patiently listened to 
for a day. Upon the accession of Victoria the same jealousy was appar- 
ent. Sir Robert Peel would not take oifice or form a ministry until the 
ladies of the Queen's bedchamber were dismissed ! 

But why enumerate these disgraceful conflicts, happily unknown to our 
system ? We have as yet no corrupt civil lists, no patronage to influence 
Congress directly, no placemen in Congress who, having bought their 
places, are ready to sell their votes ; no letters of Washington, Adams, or 
Jackson are exhumed, like that of the English king, who 'OTOte, " If the 
Duke requires some gold pills for the election, it would be wrong not to 
satisfy him ; " no disgraceful traffic in boroughs ; no " nabobs, commis- 
saries, or West Indians" here to buy places with their shoddy wealth, and 
sell their votes for rank. But these may come. In these times, when 
wealth springs so suddenly from a hundred sources ; when contractors, 
lobbies, speculators, stock-jobbers, and millionaires are making the abyss 
so wide between the rich and the poor ; when even the lean old earth has 
become as round as an alderman, and as oozy of oil [laughter], may we 
not expect a mercenary Legislature who will follow the executive drum 
when it beats to quarters, even in this Hall? But is it answered that 
Congress, like Parliament, holds the power of impeachment and the purse 
strings ? England, too, boasted of tliis for her Commons ; but impeach- 
ment has been rare in England — only two cases since the Revolution, and 
these not of ministers, though their corruption has been notorious. The 
ministers protected themselves against impeachment by their presence and 
their patronage. In Amei-ica we have had little corruption of the Cabinet, 
because there has been no contact with, or responsibility to Confess, aiid 
no occasion for impeachment. 

But am I told that the Commons have a veto on the Crown by the vote 



THE CABmET IN C0XGKES8. 435 

on siipplies? There is not a case since the Revolution, or at least but one 
or two, where the Commons have failed to grant just what ministers 
have asked. (May, page 431.) They have acquiesced in all demands. 
Since they have controlled the finances, the ex))enditure has increased 
fifty-fold, and a stupendous national debt lias arisen. The people have 
ground to complain of their stewardship, but the Crown and its ministers 
have not. It will be so here invariably when the heads of Departments 
are invited to our Halls. The subserviency will be greater, inasmuch as 
our expenditure is so unexampled, and the civil war has so aroused party 
feelings. When that time comes, we should so amend this measure, as it 
was suggested by Bolingbroke, in the time of Walpole, that all members, 
whose relatives have been preferred, or who have sold their votes, should 
be distinguished by some outward token, that the galleries might note 
them, as you may know a horse to be sold by colored ribbons on his bridle. 
The committee would assimilate our system with that of England. 
Let them not be backward, but go to the full length of the precedent. An 
attempt was made to copy the English custom and to remove our desks 
some few years ago. It was tried, and failed. Why not, at the same 
time, have our Speaker dressed after the fashion of the English Speaker, 
in a silken gown and a horsehair wig? I would be willing to give my 
mileage in the next Congress [laughter] if you, Mr. Speaker, Avould be 
willing to be thus tricked out. [Laughter.] Why not also have our Ser- 
geant-at-Arms, Doorkeepers, and assistants dressed in black tights and 
knee-buckles, sworded and belted with authority? Why not have the 
members sit with heads covered, except when rising to debate ? . (Bar- 
clay's Digest, page 78.) Why not introduce the peculiar exercises by which 
jubilant or impatient members are wont in the English Parliament to greet 
the speakers whom they like or dislike ? Our rules, as collated by Mr. 
Barclay, or rather in the Manual of Jefferson (Barclay, page 75), seem 
to point to some such diversions which the committee have overlooked : 

" Nevertheless, if a member finds tliat it is not the inclination of the House to hear 
him, and that, by conversation, or any other noise [laughter], they endeavor to drown his 
voice, it is the most prudent way to submit to the pleasure of the House and sit down ; 
for it scarcely ever happens that they are guilty of this piece of ill manners [laughter] 
without sufficient reason." 

The utility of such pei-formances is apparent as a relief from the 
tedium of a Cabinet disquisition or a lecture from the throne through the 
Secretary of State. It is recorded in Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 
in Elizabeth's time, that when an arrogant ministry demanded sujjsidies 
of the Commons, an obsequious Sergeant Ilyle said, " I marvel ifiuch 
that the House will stand upon granting a subsidy, when all ^ve have is 
her Majesty's, at which the House hemmed, and laughed, and talked." So 
that there was in I^ngland a remedy against ministerial arrogance in the 
boisterous clamor of the Commons. This system has reached the highest 
refinement in these later days, when I have seen in Parliament scenes of 
indecorum that would utterly startle any one but a Disraeli or a Peel 
from his propriety. Dr. Warren, in that authentic record of Tittlebat 
x itmouse's exercitations when elected to Parliament, ^as happily illustrated 
the English system. Titmouse, so long kept down by modesty, the twin 
sister of merit, brought into requisition some of his early accomplishments, 



436 EIGHT YEAKS IN C0NGEES8. 

and attained a sudden distinction. He had been accustomed when a hab- 
erdasher's clerk to imitate the cries of cats, the squeaking of pigs, the 
braying of donkeys, the yelping of curs, and the crowing of cocks. [Laugh- 
ter.] The biographer, in referring to these elements of his genius, says : 

" He could imitate a bluebottle-fly buzzing about the window, and, lighting upon it, ab- 
ruptly cease its little noise, and anon flying off again, as suddenly resume it ; a chicken peer- 
ing and picking its way cautiously among the growing cabbages ; a cat at midnight on the 
moonlit tiles, pouring forth the sorrows of the heart on account of the absence of her 
inconstant mate ; a cock, suddenly waking out of some horrid dream (it might be the 
nightmare), and, in the ecstasy of its fright, crowing as though it would split at once its 
throat and heart, alarming all mankind ; a little cur yelping with mingled fear and rage, 
at the same time, as it were, advancing backward, in view of a fiendish tom-cat with high- 
curved back, flaming eyes, and spitting fury." 

It was upon a certain night when the ministry had a pitched battle 
with the Opposition that the opportunity came for the display of these 
qualities. The debate waxed hot and personal. The leader of the Op- 
position was replying to a minister. It was as if my friend before me 
was excoriating the war minister for his arbitrary arrests. [Laughter.] 
Vehement and tumultuous cheers burst forth in answer to his eloquent de- 
nunciations. The ministry sat pale and anxious. Closing his recapitu- 
lation of points with frantic energy, he exclaimed : 

" And now, sir, does the noble Lord opposite talk of impeachment ? I ask him in the 
face of this House, and of the whole coimtry, whose eyes are fixed upon it with anxiety 
and agitation, will he presume to repeat his threat, or will any one on his behalf ? Sir, I 
pause for a reply." 

And he did pause, several seconds elapsing in dead silence, when pres- 
ently a most astounding and unprecedented sound of *•' cock-a-doodle- 
do-o-oo ' [great laughter] issued, with inimitable fidelity of tone and man- 
ner, from immediately behind a noble Lord, who sprang from his seat as 
if he had been shot. Every one started. Thus a ministry was saved. 
[Laughter.] Political importance, never vouchsafed to eloquence, followed 
this timely expression. The member became famous. Eugh'sh parliament- 
ary history received an example which our committee would do well to 
consider in the future perfection of this English system reported by them ! 

During the debate of yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I cannot but think that 
after the splendid speech of my friend from New York [Mr. Brooks], in de- 
fence of his privilege, he had the right to crow his "cock-a-doodle-do-o-oo." 
[Laughter.] Or perhaps the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ingeesoll], 
after his spontaneous defence of General Grant [laughter], was entitled 
to practise the same art of statesmanship. [Laughter.] I might have 
called on the venerable member from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], after 
his good-natured reply [lau<rhter] to my friend from New York [Mr. 
Brooks], to give us an exulting crow over his success! Were I pos- 
sessed of such an accomplishment, sir, I would use it to usher in, with 
the notes of chanticleer, a better dawn for our country ! But, sir, these 
are arguments rather ad ahsurd/im. Still, if we are to begin on the Eng- 
lish model, where arc we to stop? 

Let the committee assimilate our system altogether with that of Eng- 
land. See how it will work practically without a change of the Constitu- 
tion ; without the Cabinet responsible to Congress ; without their being 



THE CABINET EST CONGEE88. 437 

either elected Avhen appointed, or resigning to be reelected when they 
take office. Place them here in our midst ! Make a ministerial bench 
across the way; Remove, as was done a few years ago, these desks. 
Allow the members to be seated as in St. Stephen's or in the new Houses 
on the Thames. Let me make the picture — a Cabinet picture for the 
committee. Of course the heads of committees should sit by the heads of 
Departments. My colleague [Mr. H. ^V. Davis] on the Foreign Affairs 
would occupy a seat by the side of Mr. Seward. The one represents 
Maximilian, the other Juarez, but no matter. Lovingly they sit. The 
chairman moves to impugn the statesmanship of the Foreign Secretary. 
The House sustain the committee. Mr. Seward complacently smiles at 
the brutumfulmen, and sends his minister to Mexico to recognize the em- 
pire ! The Secretary of the Treasury is seated between the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Vermont. In comes the 
venerable Secretary of the Navy. Neptune with his grave beard and 
trident is not* more solemn, i-ising from his saline couch. [Laughter.] 
The Secretary of the Interior ! Around him gather the Indian, Land, 
and District Committees. The Attorney and Postmaster-General, both 
new as to the House, urbane and tremulous, yet confident that no mis- 
take of theii's can be reached by Congressional action. The House is 
opened — then is solemnized by a transcendental prayer to the Inscru- 
table Essence Avhom it is our privilege to worship under the poetic 
piety of an accomplished chaplain. [Laughter.] The Journal is read ! 
The Speaker raises his gavel, when a rumble, like the temblor which 
precedes the earthquake in volcanic regions, sounds through the cor- 
ridors ! All eyes are fixed upon the door ! Voild ! The thundering 
Stanton comes ! [Great laughter.] Upon his brow the very feature 
of Mars, to threaten and command ! Room for the war minister ! His 
flowing beard and spectacled face, so familiar to our eyes, 

" Assume the god, affect the nod, 
And seem to shake the spheres ! " [Laughter.] 

What to him are the princes of Begum, referred to yesterday in de- 
bate? What the princes of Lahore, with their Koh-i-noors? A whole 
casket of jewels lies in his glance ; for is he not the dispenser of $500,- 
000,000 a year ? [Laughter.] What to him is the civil list of George 
III., which the Speaker Norton told the king was great beyond example? 
Millions hang upon his smile, where only thousands hung upon the smiles 
of the proud monarchs of England ! What to him are tlie patrapies of 
the Indies ? Whole hecatombs of greenbacks daily are sacrificed by his 
order. In plain attire, but potential mood, he comes ! Far off his com- 
ing shines ; in form and seeming but a man, but in imagination like the 
angel of the pit, floating many a rood on the burning marl of war ! About 
him herd thousands of slaughtered beef! [Laughter.] Around- him 
throng millions of tons of forage, guns and wagons, horses and mules — an 
innumerable host, too great for the contracted mind of man ; and from his 
brow hang bounties for miUions, and honors for all ! Before iiim fall, as 
before an oriental throne, the prostrate House. In vain the Speaker calls 
to order ! In vain the Sergeant-at-Arms brandishes the mace. Our sym- 
bol falls before the golden wand of this magician of war ! At length he, 



438 EIGHT TEAKS IN C0KGKES8. 

too, deigns to sit. He is flanked by my military colleagues [Messrs. 
ScuENCK and Garfield], and the House is ready for the questions! 
Rare diversion here, Mr. Speaker ! The record provided by the Clerk is 
produced. My colleague [Mr. Schenck], or rather my colleague [Mr. 
Garfield], with that sense of military skill and courage for which he 
is so distinguished, is the first to rise to inquire of the War minister, and 
not without embarrassment — and the House is breathless as he asks — 
what ? "Whether the blowing out of the bulkhead of the Dutch Gap canal 
by General Butler has seriously affected the backbone of the rebellion ? 
[Laughter.] If ay, how many vertebrae are demolished, and, after confer- 
ence with the Naval Committee, whether the canal, in case of a tempest- 
uous sea, is navigable for double-enders, and whether they caunot go 
either way therein without turning round? [Laughter.] The gentleman 
from Illinois [Mr. Washburn] would call up the head of the Treasury, 
and ask whether it would be best to tax the whiskey drank in the last cen- 
tury, with a view to assist Legislatures of States to a patriotic choice of Sen- 
ators [laughter], and if so, what amount should be levied on the spirits 
of '76 ? [Laughter.] The chairman of the Ways and Means- — ever 
ready to defend his positions — would inquire, with the gravity of Pluto's 
iron countenance, whether it would not be wise to enact a law punishing 
with death all who might sell peanuts and putty on any other than a gold 
basis? [Laughter.] A chorus of voices would inquire whether the Treas- 
ury could not so interpret the five per cent, income tax as to relieve mem- 
bers recently defeated from all tax upon their mileage in the next Con- 
gress ? [Laughter.] Then the venerable Secretary of the Navy would 
be put to his catechism. A member from Massachusetts would inquire 
what effect the payment of codfish bounties, as a nursery for our seamen, 
would have upon the navigation of the iron-clads ! [Laughter.] I might 
be tempted myself to ask of the same venerable master of the trident 
whether the Abyssinians were used by Cleopatra in her naval service ; if 
so, were they at the battle of the Nile ; and " were they there all the 
while?" [Laughter.] If so, what Fompey thought of it ? [Laughter.] 
But the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Morrill], ever alive to the inter- 
ests of New England, would inquire triumphantly of Mr. Fessenden, 
whether the tariff' should not be so amended as to increase the duty on 
dyestuffs and paper, so that, on a future issue of $17,000,000,000 of 
greenbacks, the tariff will be prohibitory, the prices raised, and a satisfac- 
tory deficiency be produced in our revenues ? [Laughter.] Or whether 
by raising the price of dyestufis and paper the value of greenbacks in the 
market might not be made equal to the cost of their manufactm*e ? 
[Laughter.] But what a stunning blow would be given by a Democratic 
member, who, rising solemnly, should inquire of the War Department 
what protection, in case of foreign war, is afforded by the manning of 
Forts Warren and Lafayette by their present loyal force ; if so, how 
many are there at this time, how long have they been there, and with 
what prospect of relief? [Laughter.] I think my friend from Maryland 
[Mr. Harris] will ask that question. [Laughter.] Nor sliould the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Holman], the most useful member of this 
House, ever faithful to the soldier, be omitted from the programme. 
With what crushing results could he inquire of Mr. Sta-nton, what effect 



THE CABINET EST CONGRESS. 439 

our Democratic efforts here to increase the pay of the soldiers have had on 
the recent elections ? And if not, why not ? [Laughter.] Perhaps this, 
too, interests my colleague in front [Mr. Pendleton], who took some 
interest in soldiers' pay and the last election. [Laughter.] Or, rising to 
the innocent sublime, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Grinnell] should 
ask the Navy Department — 

'Mr. Eldridge. What gentleman fi-om Iowa does the gentleman 
mean? 

Mr. Cox. My pastoral friend.* [Great laughter.] 

Mr. Grinnell arose and propounded a question, inaudible to Mr. Cox. 

]VIi". Cox. I have no doubt the question put by the gentleman from 
Iowa is very appropriate, and that it should have been addressed to one 
of the Cabinet ministers, but I did not hear it. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Grinnell. I am opposed to the admission of Cabinet ministers. 

Mr. Cox. I know you are opposed to it ; but if they should come in, 
you would probably be as anxious to ask a question of them as of me. You 
would naturally, perhaps, ask the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. AVelles, 
whether or not the Argonautic expedition of Admiral Jason would have 
had any effect, in case the Golden Fleece had been captured in Australia, 
either on the gold market or the price of wool? [Laugliter.] I pre- 
sent these fanciful questions as an argumentum ad absurdum. If such 
questions were put by the veterans of the House, what might we not ex- 
pect from the awkward squad? [Laughter.] One thing only they arc 
designed to show, that, ridiculous as they seem, they arc not more ridi- 
culous than the questions of the English parliamentarians, which are in- 
variably laughed at or avoided. 

These illustrations of the abuse of the legislative by the executive 
power are drawn from a country where the Government is parliamentary, 
and the responsibility ministerial. In our country the Government and 
responsibility are distributed between the Executive and the Legislature, 
and there is no such thing as a ministerial responsibility. The Executive 
is responsible to the people on the expiration of his term of office, and no 
responsibility exists to the people or to the Congress Avhich can, before that 
time, remove him. But enough is shown to conclude that if the Executive 
by his Cabinet were in contact with the Legislature, the people would lose, 
through the aggressions of power and the persuasions of corruption, their 
share of the Government, and the Legislature, representative of their in- 
terests, would become the pliant instrument of the Executive. The demo- 
cratic elements of our institutions would be expunged, and tlie power 
which in England reached Parliament and people to corrupt and enslave, 
would here be used for the same purpose. 

The Executive here is not above the motives which have swayed men 
in high office in other times. There is a constant tendency in the Plxecu-- 
tive to enlarge its power. The princes of antiquity used to deify them- 
selves. Even the English kings " surrounded their persons with the jus 
divinum." We find in democratic America a perpetual ascription of glory 
to power. Even in this House I have heard members say, " Adopt this 
policy, because our rulers have ordained it." Indeed, the committee in 

» Mr. Grianell is a minister of the Gospel, and largely engaged in raising sheep. 



440 EIGHT YEAES IN CONGRESS. 

this report have transfixed several members of this Honse on this point 
of passive obedience to the powers. (See page 15.) The gold bill and 
loan bill arc the acts I refer to, and the gentlemen are from New York 
[Mr. Morris], from Massachusetts [Mr. Hooper], and others. When 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] spoke, he gave another 
voice. •' I bow," he says, " to the opinion of the Secretary of the 
Treasury — if it is right." I might well believe that he would not fall into 
an unreasoning acquiescence with the judgment or wish of any Depart- 
ment. I read in the debates of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Conven- 
tion in 1837, upon the dangers of Federal and Cabinet influences, that 
when Walter Forward sought to divorce his State from such dangerous 
and fatal connection and patronage, he [Mr. Stevens] gave his earnest 
support to Mr. Forward. I reckon upon his vote against this measure, 
which has similar tendencies. 

The report dwells upon the practice of other countries besides that of 
England. I will not seek to draw my lessons in legislation from France, 
or even Italy or Spain. We knoAV what degree of liberty is allowed in 
those lands. I doubt if France has made any progress in her assemblies 
since the middle ages. It is related of the minister De Marigny, that 
wishing to gratify the king, Philip le Bel, in a levy of taxes, he called the 
Assembly of States. A gi-eat scaffold was erected ; the king, lords, and 
bishops, took their places on it ; and the Commons attended at its foot. 
The minister proposed an excise. The king, says an old chronicle, rose 
from his throne and advanced to the extremity of the scaffold that he 
might second by his looks the harangue of his treasurer, and see who re- 
fused and who consented. This is the idea of the committee. The Cab- 
inet will be here, not to vote, but, by their looks, to second the demands 
of the President ; and woe to him in all future who dares to vote against 
the Administration ! The eyes of the Cabinet will be upon him. Bas 
tiles, towers, imprisonments, may be powerless now to influence us ; but 
who has not constituents of influence at home, anxious for the fat of con- 
tracts or the drippings of office ? 

Mr. Speaker, if I did not believe that this measure would tend to in- 
crease the power of the Executive at the expense of the Legislature, I 
would have remained silent. But, sir, in times like these I would be 
most careful of the purity of the Legislature. I believe that in these days 
of usurpation of power, when unheard-of claims and inexplicable conduct 
have marked the Executive career ; when the power of Congress in foreign 
aff^airs has been denied for our Secretary of State at a distant court ; 
when the laws we pass here are set aside by the minions of power, and 
when the State is afflicted with a civil war, and its incidents of expense, 
patronage, and increased authority, that then we should guard our portals 
as sacred from the intrusion of the ministers of that power which de- 
bauches. I must enter my negative to the opportunity for corruption. I 
do not forget the prayer that we be " not led into temptation." I base 
my opposition to this measure on the depravity of our nature. I remem- 
ber that nations liave fallen when their rulers yielded to the lures of the 
mercenary. Rome reared her grandeur by centuries of virtue, wisdom, 
and blood. When she lost her virtue she lost her grandeur and her 
power. Luxury favored corruption, and venality gave to the tongue of 



THE CABINET IN CONGRESS. 441 

her Juvenals the fiercest shafts of satire. "When her magistrates were 
elected by bribes, the sentences of her judges were purcliased, and the 
decrees of her Senate were sold, then her liberties fell, and the mistress 
of nations became the scorn and prey of the barbarian. Then she was 
ruled by a Claudius, a Nero, a Caligula, and a Narcissus ; by ministers 
who were emancipated slaves, parasites to power, and panderers to rapa- 
city. Shall such be the end of these, our terrible trials? Let us beware 
that we do not open the door to this mask of death, this saturnalia of hell. 
Whether such would be the result of this junction of the Legislature and 
the Executive, it is not for me to allege ; but I would not open the 
breach, even if I were careless of the attack. 

It is thought that this union of the Cabinet and Congress will elevate 
the standard of eloquence and statesmanship. England is pointed out as 
an example. The greatest efforts of oratory have been made against 
ministerial corruption and Executive aggrandizement even there ; and 
now in England, where the system is in full operation, the forum cannot 
boast greater names than those who opposed these encroachments upon 
the popular assembly. Pym, Hampden, Wentworth, and Falkland in 
their great struggles with Charles ; Pulteney, Wyndhara, and Bolingbroke 
in their struggles against the corruptions of the time of Anne ; Chatham 
thundering against George III. and liis minister, and Fox echoing back 
his Demosthenic philippics against the son of the great Commoner ; Burke 
with his splendid imagery ; Erskine with his pure and earnest style ; the 
finished precision of Wedderburn ; the silver tongue of Murray ; the 
gentle persuasiveness of Wilberforce ; the splendor of Sheridan ; the wis- 
dom of Camden ; the vigor of Lord GrenviUe ; the epigram of Grattan ; 
the brilliance of Canning ; the substantial logic of Peel ; the invective, 
pathos, and humor of O'Connell ; the sparkling antithesis of Shell ; the 
masterly force of Lyndhurst, and the rushing vehemence of Brougham, all 
adorn the Parliamentary oratory of England, and would have adorned it 
still more had not the seductions of power often led them to degrade their 
genius, and forget their inspiration as the guardians of England's great- 
ness and glory. It is, alas ! too true, that their finest efforts were made 
either in the defence or prosecution of great crimes and wrongs. Need I 
show to this House how nobly our own Senate and this House have been 
graced by our own orators ? Their like will never more be seen here, 
until the Executive with his minions and millions shall here creep into^our 
free halls, and by his corrupting influences call forth the deep thunders 
and fierce lightnings of a nation's wrath, expressed in the noble fervor of 
the future tribunes of the people ! 

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I raise my warning voice, not so much 
against this measure, but using it as the occasion, against that truckling 
subserviency to the power of the Executive which will dethrone the people 
and make them fit tools for the corruption of an evil day. The exercise 
of arbitrary prerogatives may not be here enacted ; no armed troops may 
enter here ; no arrests may violate our privileges ; but if they do not, the 
evil serpent of corruption may creep into our places and insinuate its cun- 
ning, and thus corrupt the integrity of the Legislature. Members may 
here fall victims to power, if not open and bold, secret and malevolent ; 
and when that fall begins, where will it end except in the fall of our liber- 



442 EIGHT YEARS EST CONGRESS. 

ties? Recollect that in civil wars moral obligations are torn asunder, 
the peaceful habits of life and thought are disturbed and destroyed, and 
other virtues not so compatible with liberty, but always compatible with 
licentiousness, alone survive. When Ave have progressed so far on the 
path of military renown that the nation will begin to regard its best de- 
fenders as its foes, and the enemy of its corruption as the enemy of its 
Constitution, then indeed will Liberty have lost its last refuge, perhaps 
even here in this Hall of the people ; and though, like its devotee, Alger- 
non Sidney, it may move with serene eye, untroubled pulse, and unabated 
resolve, from this its chosen forum, to the scaffold of its fate, we may 
yet mourn over its memory, or, disdainful of its executioner, soar away 
to some loftier code of justice and right, whei*e freedom can be realized in 
the splendor of a better vision ! 



THE END. 






31+77-2 



